Why Your Prius Might Outrun The Apocalypse And Other Practical Prepper Lessons

Your bug-out vehicle might already be parked in your driveway—and that’s the point. We open the mailbag to explore how “gray man” thinking applies to cars, why a lifted truck isn’t always the smartest exit strategy, and how a humble sedan can be the quiet hero when roads jam and nerves spike. Then we roll up our sleeves and test budget prep gear from Timu, from baseplate compasses and knot cards to tin-can “SOS” kits and mini first aid packs. What works, what fails, and where should you never gamble on quality?

We also dig into a listener’s question on Faraday bags with a clear, no-jargon test you can do at home to gauge signal blocking for phones, radios, and satellite messengers. Another listener asks how to bring skeptical parents on board without sounding like doomsday prophets. Our answer: start with shared memories of outages, add one extra gallon and two extra cans at a time, and build a pantry of food your family actually eats. Budget staples like ramen and honey take a starring role here—small costs, long shelf life, big morale.

A spike in silver prices sparks a grounded look at supply, demand, and hype, and why preppers should diversify value without chasing headlines. The heart of the episode stays practical: use low-cost marketplaces for backups and training, but pay for vetted medical gear when lives are on the line. A tourniquet is not the place to save a few dollars. If you’re ready for clear, real-world prepping—smarter routes, better kits, and calm plans that fit your life—this one’s for you.

If the show helps you think more clearly about preparedness, subscribe, share it with a friend, and leave a quick review so others can find it. What’s the one budget item you trust in your kit?

Temu - SOS Kit https://tinyurl.com/2s67dhkj

              Compass https://tinyurl.com/36zpva8f

Augason Farms
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Chapters

• 0:00 Cold Open And Mailbag Setup
• 0:51 Gray Man Vehicles And Bug Out Choices
• 3:17 Range, Reliability, And Standing Out
• 5:21 Faraday Bags And Simple EMP Tests
• 9:56 Convincing Skeptical Parents To Prep
• 14:01 Budget Staples: Ramen And Honey
• 17:00 Silver’s Price Spike And Speculation
• 21:45 Timu Gear: What’s Worth It

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:09

The National Middle Survey position is a severe thunderstorm in the morning. Welcome. 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_00: 0:41

Hey all, this is Keith, and welcome back to the Common Sense Practical Prepper Podcast, December 23rd, 2025. Let's jump into the mailbag real quick. Got three emails I want to go over. Actually, four. Have four emails I want to go over. One is about three weeks old now. Gentleman emailed me about the episode on the gray man. And he mentioned that the gray man concept also applies to bug out vehicles or regular vehicles. Couldn't agree more. And the great thing about that is any vehicle can be your bug out vehicle. So the family truckster that's sitting in the garage, or the Prius, or the Tesla, or the F-350, the Bubba truck with the big ass wheels and the six-inch lift. Certainly all can be your bug out vehicle because that's probably your everyday driver. When it comes to bug out vehicles, it's kind of a tough nut to crack because if you're gonna bug out, you want something that holds everybody that's going, that holds all the gear that's going, and it's going to be reliable. So we have the Tesla. If that's what you drive, that's your bug out vehicle. Certainly could be limited on range, unless you have a generator that you can charge your Tesla as you're going down the road. And I guess if you think about it, so if you're trying to escape a city and you're trying to be a little bit incognito or a little bit gray man in the gray car concept, you need to be not sticking out. So the Bubba truck with the big six-inch lift and all the doodads hanging off of it, that's calling attention to yourself. But if that's what you're driving, that's what you're driving. Now the Bubba truck's gonna get you off-road, you're gonna go over medians. The Bubba truck will be able to adapt to the terrain and the environment a little bit better than your little two-door or four-door family sedan. But the little two-door sedan or the little Honda Civic is gonna blend in 100%. So it meant to be in a situation that whatever you have, you have. Now, would I love to go to one of the military supply websites and buy a deuce and a half or an MRAP? I would love that. That'd be fantastic. But can you imagine an SHTF situation, grid down zombie apocalypse, and I come rolling out in this deuce and a half that is just gonna like go right through the neighborhood, blow through any checkpoints, and that I think would be the ultimate bug out vehicle. Or those expedition explorer things that are these they have like 50 wheels on them and they can drive through the Arctic and up mountains. Have you ever seen those things? I forget what they're called, but these things are absolutely enormous. Those would be fantastic. But yeah, but they're about$800,000. So well outside of my budget. And hey, if somebody's listening and that's within your budget, knock yourself out. Just come pick me up when the poop hits the fan and we'll get out of here. So that was one of the emails. So another one is Faraday bags. I talked about Faraday bags, gosh, maybe a couple months ago. And they act, they're asking, do these things actually work? Or is it still gonna fry my radio or my garment in reach or whatever you happen to have inside your Faraday bag? My suggestion is this, and I'm not an expert on EMPs, and I'm not really I don't know anyone who's an expert on EMPs because I I haven't lived through one, I don't think. So get a mesh bag, not one of the plastic cheapy ones, put your item inside it, put your cell phone inside it, put your garment in reach, put your burner phone, your girlfriend's phone, whatever. Put that phone in the Faraday bag, make sure it's you know zipped up and sealed like it should be, and then call it. Stand back on the other side of the room or walk halfway down the block and call and find out if it rings. If it doesn't ring, then it's protected. Now, is it protected against a big EMP? I don't know. All I know is it's blocking the signals, it's not allowing the sell signal to get to it. So that's something. Another email we have, that would be the third email, is they want to get their parents in the prepping, but their dad says, this is all doomsday nonsense. How do I sell it to him without sounding like a nut? This is how I would approach my parents or approach my dad. I would say, Dad, remember the blizzard of whatever, or you remember when we were without power, Katrina, or whatever hurricane or whatever storm maybe you and your family happen to live through, and ask them if there's anything they could have done or anything you and the family could have done to make that incident a little more homey or a little more normal, whether you're without power for one day, three days, five days, whatever the situation may be. So just think no power, small supply chain interruption, prices go sky high. And then what you do to combat that is you start slow. Buy an extra gallon of water or an extra case or flat of water when you go to the store. When you buy your canned corn, your canned veggies, buy two extra cans of corn, two extra cans of beans, maybe two bucks, a container of honey, start small, and before you know it, your dad and your family have built up a very small pantry that has a long shelf life that's going to be very welcomed if the situation arises or when the situation arises. Okay, the last email. What one food item can you buy in bulk that's inexpensive, stores forever, and their family will actually eat it during an SHTF situation. I immediately think of ramen. Ramen has a 10-year shelf life, dirt cheap, kids love it. You can do all sorts of things to it. Honey, honey is another good item to have. Honey does not spoil, it's non-perishable. And I've got a quick story about honey. A friend of mine, this was maybe 20 years ago, she lives in Canada, and she was coming down to the States. And I said, Hey, as you're passing through, can you bring me some honey? Because back then I was making mead. And honey, a five-gallon pail of honey, which weighs like 85 pounds, was five dollars, five US dollars. So she purchased the honey, coming across the border, was stopped by U.S. Customs, they searched her vehicle and they found the five-gallon pail of honey. They confiscated it. She was not allowed to bring any food into the U.S. Well, we talked about it beforehand. Honey is not a food. Honey is non-perishable. It doesn't go bad. So she didn't argue with customs. That's probably the worst thing you can do. But she just explained, look, this is a non-perishable. This is not a food, because there's a big sign, you know, no food, no ammo, whatever, drugs, whatever it happens to be. But she tried to let customs know that it's not food. It's non-perishable. It doesn't spoil. So how can it be food in that sense? Oh, they didn't buy it for a second, don't get me wrong. And so they had she walked over with customs to this big, it was like a sewer grate where they dump, I don't know where this stuff goes. Hopefully it doesn't go into a river. But they had to break the pail open with a little axe and dump five gallons, that probably took forever, five gallons of honey down this little drainage ditch. And she had to witness it and sign it. Oh yeah, he dumped my honey, and I'm not, I won't do it again. Slap on the wrist. I was so bummed. I digress. Honey's great. Put it in food, put it in tea, make a hot toddy. Honey goes a long way. Kids love it. Great morale booster. Okay, let's get into the topic at hand. Let me talk about silver real quick. So I am recording this at 1610 hours EST. So 410 p.m. EST on the 23rd. The price of silver is almost$72 an ounce. Last Thursday or Friday, I think it was like 63. It's up almost$3 an ounce today. I'm not a precious metals expert. I'm not an economic advisor, but this is insane. All the articles I'm reading, I can't get a solid reason on why silver year to date has gone from like$30 an ounce in January to$72, nearly tripled. Everybody's like, oh, supply and demand. Then everybody's like, oh, they're manipulating the market. So I can't get a real answer. Multiple articles say the demand outweighs the supply. EVs, solar panels, data centers, all sorts of tech needs silver, and we don't have enough of it. Samsung apparently released a statement that they're working on a solid state battery, and I don't know a whole lot about it. I haven't read up on it. A solid state battery that is very safe, charges very quick, and has a very high capacity. So technically, this battery could replace lead acid, gel, lithium, lithium iron, phosphate, all the other batteries because it's going to be much more efficient. Some people are saying that's a reason why silver's up$3, almost$3 per ounce, because Samsung has come out with this press release on a new solid state battery. Some other mining company out in Utah or somewhere out west just got the rights to this big chunk of land that has all this silver in it. So they're all stoked about that. And there apparently is a huge amount of silver in the land out west. They're going to be able to mine it, and then everybody's going to be happy. Who knows? Who knows what that's going to do to the price other than increase it, at least for today. So we'll see what happens. They're probably several months, if not a year or two away from breaking ground and digging holes or whatever a silver mine looks like. I probably doesn't look like in the movies where guys, you know, crawl in in these little carts and with little picks and stuff like that. I'm not up on mining at all. All right. So the main topic is Timu. Timu, AliExpress, Alibaba, all of these websites in China, we can purchase really inexpensive and it's also cheap quality of almost anything. Now I know what you're saying. Well, Keith, isn't everything on Amazon or everything on the internet, doesn't everything come from China? For the most part, you are correct. So if you're on Amazon and you're buying a solar panel, that solar panel was probably manufactured in China. If you're buying a Stanley Cup, you're buying a compass, you're buying a pair of socks, a pair of shoes, probably manufactured in China. And with these factories, there are several large factories in China and they all make the same thing. So let's say they're all going to put out sweatshirts. They put out five million sweatshirts, but Champion wants their logo on it. Northface wants their logo on it. Sweatshirts.com, whatever. They want their logo on it. It's the same company, the same material, but each company wants their label on it. So the Champion sweatshirts cost$30. The North Face sweatshirt costs$105. Same material, same sweatshirt, different label, different brand. So with that said, the things you get on Timu, some of them you will find on Amazon, but some of the stuff on Timu is really cheap quality-wise and inexpensive. So what I did, I bought several things, several prepping items just to run it through the ringer and see what it's all about. So the first thing I got was a compass. It was like$1.50. And it's on the little plastic bed. It has the little ruler on it. And it is showing true north. It has a rotating bezel, has a little lanyard, a little magnifying glass. You can put it on the map. So as far as this goes, it's working now. Now I don't know what's going to happen six months from now, but I'm going to keep it around and I'm going to mess around with it. I mean, there's not there's only so many things that could go wrong with a compass. As long as it's calibrated, I guess, correctly, then it should hold true north. Now, if I get it around some other material, some other machinery, if it starts going haywire. The other thing I purchased was lanyard with about 12 different cards on them for knots. I am not a very good knot tire. So these are about three inches by three inches. And here's some of the knot examples. They're on front and back, little drawings, the Bolin knot, alpine butterfly knot, two half hitch, figure eight, a hanson knot. So it can go inside your bag, clip onto your belt, clip onto your backpack, clip onto a carabiner inside the backpack. And if you ever need to practice your knot tying skills, either at home or in the field, you've got this. It was like$2.25. I got like three of them. One's gonna go get home bag, bug out bag, and then my go bag. So each bag is gonna have one. I also purchased what they called an SOS kit. And if you go to Timu, just put in SOS kit, you'll see it listed about 15 different times, all different prices, but basically all the same items made by the same company. So even the sellers on Timu purchase their SOS kit from one company, and then they just say, oh, you know, Mike Jones, I'm now selling this on my Timu website or whatever they do over there. So it's a little red tin with SOS on the front, and the items that it has in it, there is a red whistle and it has a little keychain, so it's a keychain whistle, and the whistle worked. I'm not gonna blow out anybody's ears by blowing into the whistle, and a little hand saw, two little like key ring rings on each end, and it does not look like it's gonna do very well, but I'll take that out of the yard and I'll find a branch and I'll give it a shot. What else do we have in here? Now there is a little compass, it looks like it comes out of a cracker jack box. I'll mess with that one, and oh boy, it's kind of it's kind of giving true north. I compared it with the other one, it's a few degrees off, but you get what you pay for. Let's see. There was a ferro rod and it works. It it sparks eventually. It must have some coating on it, but eventually I can get it. I got it to spark, so that works. And a little, a little mini leatherman. Again, I'm not sure how long this is gonna last, but it's got the little pliers, three knives, a screwdriver, a mini flashlight, and it's on a keychain. But again, it's not gonna save your life, but it's better than nothing. A couple three bucks, no harm, no foul. And it also had where'd this thing go? It's one of these pieces of metal. You can get them in metal and heavy plastic. It's about the size of a credit card or a debit card, and has a bunch of different tools in it. Now, these are not, this is not the device where you can actually punch out like the fish hook, the little knife, the little blade. These all stay within the stainless steel card, if you will. And we have a saw, we have a wrench, a couple different screwdriver, it's got a ruler, bottle opener, can opener. It just kind of neat. And you can get these in different sizes. There's one, I think, that has 30 different items in it, but I did not order that one. Now, the last thing I got was a mini first aid kit because I was really curious to see what kind of quality was inside this little first aid kit. Everything's jammed in there. I'm never gonna get it back in there. The first thing that popped out was a piece of rubber coiled up with a little band over it. This looks like the tourniquet thing that the phlebotomist puts around your forearm and tells you to make a fist before she draws blood. There is like a one-way pocket mask that's all folded up inside a seal-able bag. There is some medical tape, I think, maybe three foot if that. Not sure how sturdy that's gonna be. There is a bandage, PBT, a Paul Boy Tom PBT bandage, five centimeters by 4.5 meters. Doesn't look very high quality. Something was kind of weird. They have about 25, they're like Q-tips, but they are alcohol disinfectants. So you open it up, I guess you you crack the little tube, alcohol runs to one end so you can clean out a wound. I mean, it's kind of neat. That kind of makes sense. There are some a triangular bandage. Triangular and bandage is both spelled wrong, but when you need a bandage, spelling's not counting. I'm not gonna take off for spelling. Now, looking into the rest of the bag, and again, I'm never gonna be able to get this stuff in here. One of the Mylar emergency blankets, a pair of vinyl gloves that probably fit people with very small hands, a pair of scissors that I wouldn't trust to cut string, first aid burn cream. Again, at least it's something. Knuckle bandages, some gauze, 70% isopropyl alcohol pads, more sterile gauze. We got three by three, four by four, we got some two by twos, one by ones. Oh, an iodine prep pad. That's kind of cool. I kind of wish they'd had the antiseptic Q-tips in a in an iodine version or like a beasting version or a bug bite version, antiseptic towelette. Oh, here's some mole skin for blisters. That's kind of cool. A bunch of different bandages, super duper cheap bandages, and a little first aid book. It's like one of those maps. If I unfold this thing, I'm never gonna be able to get it back in there. But these were$3.99. If you go on Timu and look up mini first aid kit, again, you'll come up with about 15 different examples. This one has maybe I'll stick some links in the show notes if I can find the exact ones. Maybe I'll have to go back to my orders. But I'll put a couple links in the show notes near the Augustin Farms affiliate link so y'all can take a peek at that. But yeah, but that's basically it. You know, when it comes to TMU, that would kind of be my backup to my backup. They have all sorts of tourniquets, all sorts of trauma kits. But honestly, folks, if a tourniquet on Timu is$12 or$15, it still might be the very same tourniquet you get by a different name on Amazon. But when it comes to life and death situations, I could never forgive myself. If I put a tourniquet on somebody, it breaks, it snaps, it does, it's not able to tighten down with the woundless and able to stop the bleeding. I would never be able to forgive myself. I put that tourniquet on someone and it's not able to be successful, assuming I put it on right, and it's not able to successfully stop the bleed, that would just, that would just tear me up. So you spend the$35 or the$45, whatever these tourniquets cost, and you get something that is of higher quality. Again, this may be the exact same tourniquet. The one you get on Amazon may be the exact same one in Timu, but call it psychological, call it whatever you want, but I'll spend the extra 10, 20,$30 to have that and have the peace of mind that I have a higher quality item, at least in my little peace-sized brain. I don't have the Timu tourniquet, I have the Amazon tourniquet, and that's the one that's gonna work. And I'm gonna apply it successfully, and I'm gonna save somebody's life one day. So that's how I look at Timu versus non-Timu or Alibaba, AliExpress versus Amazon or any other website. You can go to all the different medical sites. There's a bunch of different ones. Pick your poison, whatever medical supply site you want to go to, check out their stuff. It's probably manufactured in the United States, but as we all know, a lot of it is probably manufactured in China. All right, folks, I appreciate everybody stopping by as usual. I'll probably not post for a few days. I'm trying to stay away from social media. I've been on X reading some articles, reading some headlines the past couple days, and it's just really, really depressing. There's really not much out there that's capturing the Christmas spirit between the anti ICE protests, Brown University. The shenanigans with the PM and everybody down in Australia, the folks listening to my podcast, not counting you all. You guys are fantastic. I love ya. But these politicians, I have no idea what's crawled up their butt and died because they're coming out with some crazy, crazy stuff. But we'll see what happens. So Merry Christmas, happy Hanukkah, happy holidays, whatever you celebrate. Enjoy the time with your family and friends. Let's not forget about the real meaning of Christmas. It's not about the latest Xbox or the latest tourniquet you get from Amazon. It's all about your faith and not to get too preachy, but it's all about the birth of Jesus Christ. That's about as religious as I'll probably get because you didn't tune in to listen to me rant and rave and fire and brimstone and quote scripture, that's for sure. And as always, be careful out there. Take care of one another. And until next time.

SPEAKER_01: 21:24

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