213 Stay Dry Stay Alive - Wet Exposure Bug-Out In The Wilderness

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Camping, Bushcrafting, Survival Skills. The Rules of Three. These are your survival tools now. There’s No thermostat… No four walls or ceilings. No reset button. Out There, it’s you against the elements, every hour, of every day.

The sun… it’s gonna scorch you. The nights… you’ll Freeze. The wind will cut through your layers to test your limits.

And Rain… Oh… Rain will soak you to your core, cover your skin and gear with damp mold and mildew, and drain your body of its strength with every step and every breath you take.

If you’re not ready… If you don’t respect the monster that is exposure… it will Kill you. And that’s not hype… Not Click-bait. That’s reality. Hard hitting, in your face, but real.

It doesn’t take long for hypothermia to set in when your clothing and skin are wet. Upwards of 2500 people die from Hypothermia each year in the US with wet conditions and the homeless being the contributing factors. If you are bugging out to the woods… my friend, you are homeless. And there are other dangerous risks that are associated with trying to survive in wet conditions.

Weakened Immune Systems, Skin Irritations and Fungal Infections, Respiratory Conditions, and rapid core temperature loss. Your body cools off 25 times faster when wet. And if that wasn’t bad enough… you can actually overheat and have heatstroke if your body is wet, while in a hot humid environment. Who knew?

There’s a reason why we practice the Survival Rules of Three… 3 minutes without air, 3 hours without shelter, 3 days without water, and 3 weeks without food. Maximizing and Force-Multiplying your Air, Shelter, Water, and Food is key to your survival in extreme conditions.

3 Hours Without Shelter in extreme weather conditions is meaningful, and important, and should not be overlooked. Our bodies and by extension, our gear, need shelter. Shelter from the heat, the cold, and Yes… the damp and wet.

Tonight, we are going to live and learn vicariously through Jeremy’s own real-world experience of surviving through an extreme wet-condition environment for an uncomfortable extended period of time in the woods of North Carolina.

Consider, How you would do and What you would do, or do differently, if you were in his boots.

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Transcript

Here’s the scenario. Cities are imploding. Riots break out. Looting. Lockdowns. Shortages. Staying put and bugging in, is not an option. The streets around you will turn hostile, and your instinct will be to Run. To get out. Head for the woods. Put distance and trees, lots of trees, between yourself and the chaos.

But let me be clear. Nature doesn’t care why you’re out there. The forest doesn’t care about your bug-out plan or your gear. Out there, the number one killer isn’t anger, looters, or bullets… its Exposure. It’ll be Too hot… Too cold... Too wet... Too dry. It will strip you down faster than any enemy ever could.

Camping, Bushcrafting, Survival Skills. The Rules of Three. These are your survival tools now. There’s No thermostat… No four walls or ceilings. No reset button. Out There, it’s you against the elements, every hour, of every day.

The sun… it’s gonna scorch you.

The nights… you’ll Freeze.

The wind will cut through your layers to test your limits.

And Rain… Oh… Rain will soak you to your core, cover your skin and gear with damp mold and mildew, and drain your body of its strength with every step and every breath you take.

If you’re not ready… If you don’t respect the monster that is exposure… it will Kill you.

And that’s not hype… Not Click-bait. That’s reality. Hard hitting, in your face, but real.

It doesn’t take long for hypothermia to set in when your clothing and skin are wet. Upwards of 2500 people die from Hypothermia each year in the US with wet conditions and the homeless being the contributing factors. If you are bugging out to the woods… my friend, you are homeless. And there are other dangerous risks that are associated with trying to survive in wet conditions.

Weakened Immune Systems, Skin Irritations and Fungal Infections, Respiratory Conditions, and rapid core temperature loss. Your body cools off 25 times faster when wet. And if that wasn’t bad enough… you can actually overheat and have heatstroke if your body is wet, while in a hot humid environment. Who knew?

There’s a reason why we practice the Survival Rules of Three… 3 minutes without air, 3 hours without shelter, 3 days without water, and 3 weeks without food. Maximizing and Force-Multiplying your Air, Shelter, Water, and Food is key to your survival in extreme conditions.

3 Hours Without Shelter in extreme weather conditions is meaningful, and important, and should not be overlooked. Our bodies and by extension, our gear, need shelter. Shelter from the heat, the cold, and Yes… the damp and wet.

Tonight, we are going to live and learn vicariously through Jeremy’s own real-world experience of surviving through an extreme wet-condition environment for an uncomfortable extended period of time in the woods of North Carolina.

Consider, How you would do and What you would do, or do differently, if you were in his boots.

So… Let’s get to it…

Jeremy
So and what are we talking about? We are.

01:55.71
Keith
Well, you went you went ah on an excursion, right? I mean, some sort of ah contract or whatever. do you want to talk about that first and say what it is? and Because that's going to lead right into what the show's about.

02:06.25
Jeremy
Yeah. Um, you know, and I've, I've said it multiple times. i am, um, I'm an independent contractor for a lot of, uh, DOD contracts that have to do with culminating exercises for special operations forces.

02:21.37
Jeremy
And I'm just essentially, I'm a glorified paid actor. um My military experience comes into it, but um what I'm there for is to provide basically a training tool for soldiers who are going through certain training to interact with civilians that are part of a fictitious country.

02:42.82
Jeremy
um And we are guerrilla fighters um that have formed together to form a resistance against a tyrannical government. um

02:52.00
Keith
Most of our listeners would know this as like war games.

02:55.77
Jeremy
Yeah, yeah, there's a couple different, you know, anybody who's been part of the military community have probably heard of some of these contracts. um Robin Sage, Grey Knight, Durna Bridge, and a couple of others.

03:07.69
Jeremy
And they're they're, because of the the the expansiveness of them, they're huge contracts. So they they actually expand over multiple, multiple counties.

03:19.68
Jeremy
So, everywhere from basically right around like the Fayetteville Fort Bragg area and West, almost all the way down to the border where South Carolina and North Carolina is.

03:34.02
Jeremy
And then the furthest West lane, which is where I'm at is actually out by Um, it's actually kind of close to Charlotte. So, um, that's how, that's how expansive this thing is.

03:47.40
Jeremy
So, um, but for this particular, this last contract, this last class, uh, this has got to be the weirdest August that I had ever been through here in North Carolina.

04:01.76
Jeremy
And I say that because during the entirety of the contract, which is right around two weeks, um it rained 24-7 except for like a day, maybe a day and a half total.

04:15.45
Jeremy
um It was constant rain and mostly like torrential downpour the whole time. um but actually woke up some mornings in August and it was around 55 degrees.

04:28.26
Jeremy
And I walked out and I'm like, the the world's ending like what why is it 55 degrees in august what the hell is going on here and um

04:38.03
Keith
So how long have you been doing these, um, these contracts, these same, same type of thing?

04:41.63
Jeremy
um since we're around 2020 yeah yeah robin sage has well be going up in classes but uh they'll be going up to five classes

04:43.41
Keith
2020. twenty Okay. So four or five years, you've been doing this every year.

04:57.10
Jeremy
Um, and this, this last one has actually given me, ah time to consider, uh, possibly taking a mental and physical pause from this particular contract because yeah, I mean, I'm still, I consider myself to be a pretty tough dude.

05:11.03
Keith
Ooh, hiatus.

05:17.36
Jeremy
Um, I can still hang with these young guys mostly, even though I, you know, I'm a short fat man with a gray beard. Um, but the, the, the, the the weather, ah it absolutely broke me off.

05:32.12
Jeremy
Like, I don't know how people live in the Northwest area of the country where it rains. Like, like I've heard it rains there for months on end. I don't know what that's like, but i can imagine just how angry i would be at everything because,

05:51.25
Jeremy
I'll just put it to you this way. So our camp is set back in the woods and we are kind of, I would say about a hundred and a hundred yards off of a trail. And we're sort of set back in the woods, lots of cover, um you know, lots of shade, but for anybody who's actually considered like bugging out, you know, there's this glorified sort of romanced thing about, I'm going to grab my stuff and I'm going to go live in the woods when the,

06:21.07
Jeremy
when the S you know hits the fan and I'm out and I'm going you know have this community and we're going to live in the woods like cavemen and you know down with tyrannical yeah men in tights I'm going to tell you something the the the it was it really was um there was it was so dark uh

06:29.89
Keith
Like Robin Hood and his merry men. Men in tights. Great. That's a great movie, man.

06:46.79
Jeremy
And without enough sunshine down in the area that we were, i did not have and all the clothes that I had worn. um And I always pack heavy for these contracts. I always bring extra clothing because I know that there are certain days where I'm going to get wet as it's part of the mission.

07:06.84
Jeremy
But like even the one long sleeve shirt that I had with me just in case it was cool in the mornings was completely drenched. And i wasn't even able to take all of my clothing up to pasture to lay out in the sun because we're in a, you know, a tactical environment, quote unquote.

07:26.54
Jeremy
So the one day that we had a sunshine, everything, i i hung it up. I tried, um but nothing dried out. I mean, we had, um we had a lot of our students and contractors um who were,

07:42.79
Jeremy
limited on the amount of boots and shoes and stuff that they have with them. And we started getting cases of pretty severe trench foot. And one of them, the most severe was a medic. And I was shocked because i'm I'm looking at him and I'm like, dude, what's wrong with you?

07:56.35
Jeremy
Why are you limping? And, um, he was trying to whisper in my ear that he needed me to get ahold of the cadre. And i was not going to allow him to come out of role.

08:09.98
Jeremy
And, um, And I said, okay, what is wrong with you? Show me what is wrong with you. You're a medic. Let me see it. And he pulled off his shoes and his socks and I was absolutely floored. He had severe bilateral trench foot.

08:25.02
Jeremy
And to the point where the bottom of his feet, and this is the, and then it's going to sound gross. It's, it's going to sound absolutely disgusting when I say this, but the bottom of his feet looked like a bowl of grits.

08:39.75
Jeremy
Like, The skin was already raised. It was blanched white. It was puffed up. It was blistering. um And you know, in your foot, you have sort of these crevices, you know, that they follow the pad of your foot and your calluses, and you can feel them, you know, when you, when you run your fingernail or your finger through them, that those crevices had started to widen and he had classic trench foot.

09:06.22
Jeremy
It was nasty looking. And I'm looking at him and I'm like, please tell me that you have been changing your socks because i'm starting to question whether or not you have. And he said, yes, I've been changing my socks.

09:21.72
Jeremy
I have even changed my boots. Now all of my socks and all of my boots are completely drenched. Nobody had a way to actually um dry anything out.

09:32.65
Jeremy
So what we started doing is We would stoke up the fire by our kitchen area and him and a couple of other people that I knew had you know, bad feet going on.

09:43.45
Jeremy
Um, we had them bring all their socks and all their shoes and we put them around the fire and we just had them sit there and we hung up a line and we started drying out their stuff.

09:55.39
Jeremy
And we, you know, got their feet close enough to the fire to where at least the warmth of the fire could get to their feet to start drying out the skin. um But that also medically that creates that creates its own challenges because once you have moist skin that's raised and you introduce warmth to them, um if they dry too quickly, then that skin starts to like, for lack of a better term, it starts to roll in on itself. It can make things worse worse if you don't bring them up in temperature evenly.

10:29.58
Jeremy
So, and I apologize. I've got like, um,

10:32.30
Keith
So is that the cure for trench foot? I mean, trench foot is like your your feet being cold and wet for a long period of time, right? Hours, like, okay.

10:39.61
Jeremy
yep. Yeah. It can set in in hours.

10:41.37
Keith
So is there is there a cure for that?

10:44.02
Jeremy
Um, the best cure is to get them dry. Um, yeah, yeah, yeah.

10:46.48
Keith
Is that kind of like what happens to your hands when you're in the pools too long? Okay.

10:50.69
Jeremy
You start to see like that wrinkle, you know, your fingers wrinkle up when you're in the bathtub too long and kids think it's cool looking.

10:53.13
Keith
Mm-hmm.

10:57.34
Keith
It's not cool on your feet.

10:57.53
Jeremy
Well, the, Well, no, no. And the the the thing is, is that the human body can only absorb so much external moisture. um And what ends up happening is, is that the top of the dermis starts to loosen up and it starts to, I won't say decay, but it starts to slough.

11:17.34
Jeremy
It starts to become loose enough to where that skin can actually just separate itself. um His had not gotten to that particular point yet, but they were white any much longer. And he he would have had um whole sections of the pad of his foot come completely off.

11:35.71
Jeremy
So we kept him in the in the in the fight. we

11:39.81
Keith
so that's a hospital visit.

11:41.47
Jeremy
yeah Well, i don't know if when I saw, yeah, if it had gotten any worse, we probably would have had to contact someone.

11:44.28
Keith
and it got that bad.

11:49.93
Jeremy
um But I took pictures of his feet and I think I sent it to y'all. um But um I sent him to the guy that we call our G chief. He's the, he's, he's a retired SF guy. He's, he's part of the role play, but I was like, I'm going to, I'm going put it on you to kind of whether or not you want to contact him.

12:09.29
Jeremy
And he said, no, I'm not going to contact him until, until he says that he needs us, absolutely needs us to contact them. We're not going to contact him.

12:16.24
Keith
So this was a trainee, not a trainer.

12:17.92
Jeremy
Yeah. Yeah. It was a trainee. It was a student.

12:20.30
Keith
Got it.

12:21.30
Jeremy
And I, right when I saw him start to whisper into my ear, I just put my hand up and I was not going to allow him to come out of role because he's a great medic. He was a, he's a great medic and he was really doing a good job.

12:33.95
Jeremy
The problem is, is that when some people are really, really dedicated to that role, especially a medic, they can oftentimes ignore uh, the, the things that are wrong with them because they have such a drive to take care of others. And this is one of those guys.

12:48.84
Jeremy
Um, but his medical knowledge, uh, was absolutely outstanding. Uh, he and I had a lot of talks and so again, going back to the bug out theory of this, depending on where you live and, you know, the time of year,

13:06.17
Jeremy
um You know, a lot of people, they associate um summer with just heat. and And if you were to live, like, say, in the central states, you know, depending on, you know, like South Texas all the way up to, say, basically where you guys are, you know that there's going to be heat.

13:22.76
Jeremy
But the summertime also brings the rains, especially where I live here in North Carolina on the East Coast. Summertime always is famous for a lot of rain.

13:34.27
Jeremy
We just don't normally have two fricking weeks of nonstop, you know, and un unrelenting rain. um

13:43.92
Keith
And that can happen in a real life scenario. So as part of your role playing project there, does, can the wet, does the weather factor in as one of the issues?

13:45.99
Jeremy
Yeah. um and Issues as,

13:57.77
Keith
Or do you guys just, or you guys should like, does it affect the actual, um you know, mission or is it part of the mission?

14:06.98
Jeremy
No, it's going to happen regardless of the weather. Cold, rain, sun, beautiful, not beautiful, hail. The only time that they will ever stop pause or pause or delay training is if there is some some factor that could um be life-threatening.

14:26.96
Jeremy
Because and you know when we're operating in austere environments in the military and we're engaging the enemy, the weather doesn't care. You know, the weather's not going to give a damn. And the same scenario, if you if you have been forced to bug out or if you have voluntarily for some unknown reason decided that this is the best course of action for you and your family, you have to deal with the consequence of the weather if you do not have a plan and you do not have a place to go.

14:37.28
Keith
That's right.

14:54.41
Jeremy
And again, this this this ideology or this romanced theory of jumping into the woods and I'm going to live this thing out. No, you're not. No, you're not. It's not. you Can you? Yes.

15:08.42
Jeremy
Should you? Hell no. It's just not sensical to do that to yourself because your best your best shelter is where you already are.

15:23.54
Jeremy
um If it was an absolute emergency and you had to leave, yeah, okay, I get it. I got it. um But I'll just put it to you this way. Two weeks in the rain.

15:35.97
Jeremy
um living in a tent and I had plenty of stuff and I have all my gear and I was packed to the point of like someone who had pre-made totes and all their stuff threw it in a truck and then, you know, bugged out to the woods. That's how heavy i was packed.

15:55.31
Jeremy
So I had enough stuff to sustain myself for a considerable amount of time. The only problem is, is that if you're living in the dark and you're living in the wet,

16:06.54
Jeremy
and you're living in an environment that doesn't really provide any airflow because of the weather, guess what happens? Mold. Mold was growing on the inside of my tent.

16:20.70
Jeremy
Not a little bit. All of my gear looked like a damn forest. It had actual mold spores growing like a lot off of my stuff.

16:31.45
Keith
I saw the pictures, man. it looked It looked like nasty food that had been left in the refrigerator.

16:35.96
Jeremy
Yeah. Yeah.

16:36.74
Keith
It was like hairy and stuff growing off of stuff.

16:37.07
Jeremy
And, oh, dude, I was, i was so angry.

16:39.30
Keith
It was horrible looking. I thought it was some sort of a like a contagion or something came and hit your...

16:45.33
Jeremy
That's, that's what I felt like.

16:45.56
Keith
yeah like

16:48.14
Jeremy
Cause I walked into my tent and I was, and we were, I can't remember we were getting ready to do. And I walked in there and I knew that the the bottom of my tent, I have to get rid of this tent now. So the bottom of my tent had become saturated.

17:01.30
Jeremy
And I started to have standing water inside of my tent. And I couldn't figure out the why until i realized that some of the seals around the edge of my the bottom of my tent were so wet that they had just loosened up.

17:14.79
Jeremy
And because those seals had loosened up, water was coming in. So I was trying to solve that problem.

17:21.37
Keith
Because I would have assumed you would have had a waterproof tent.

17:25.05
Jeremy
Oh, it used to be. Because and in anything, water they nothing that is advertised as waterproof or water resistant is 100% waterproof or water resistant unless it is an enclosed container.

17:38.78
Keith
Yeah.

17:39.14
Jeremy
and And I say that because my tent, I've had it for quite some time. I i add extra, excuse me, extra waterproofing to my tent. I i reinforce my seals.

17:51.22
Jeremy
But after two weeks of rain... eventually something's going to loosen up and the corners of those seals loosened up and water was starting to stand. And it was all, i figured, okay, it's concentrated in this one corner. I can see it. It's not awful, awful. It is annoying.

18:09.43
Jeremy
I've grabbed some MRE box, the cardboard. I laid that down so it could absorb the water and that started to work. And then I walked in one day and I'm, I'm for some reason, the smell hit me like this funky, you know, that, that basement smell.

18:23.24
Jeremy
And so I'm sniffing around and I turn on my, yeah, I turned on my light cause I couldn't see.

18:24.82
Keith
Right. Mildew.

18:29.76
Jeremy
and I looked at the sides of the tent and I was like, okay, those look like mill that looks like mildew or mold spores. And then I started looking around and my, my, my hats, all of my hats, uh, had mold spores growing on them.

18:45.62
Jeremy
Like, like out, like, like the, no, they were hung up.

18:48.57
Keith
Were they sitting in the water or were they hung up or?

18:52.12
Jeremy
They were hung up.

18:52.25
Keith
wow

18:52.92
Jeremy
They were wet and they had, I had hung them to possibly, you know, try to get some, you know, dryness to them.

18:59.47
Keith
o

19:00.11
Jeremy
Um, and and they literally look like fuzzy creatures. That's how much mold had grown on them in such a short amount of time. All of them, all four of my hats. Um,

19:10.97
Keith
On the construction and industry, we have a saying, water always finds a way. And it does.

19:16.62
Jeremy
yeah

19:17.22
Keith
And that's the that's the number one damaging thing in the construct when you're building when you're building a project that's the number one thing anytime someone says the word leak it is all hands on deck immediately because water will destroy everything

19:29.77
Jeremy
yeah

19:32.86
Jeremy
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I found the mold in my hats and then I started picking up my gear and I was like, I was started cursing so bad. I'm inside of my tent.

19:46.24
Jeremy
My um all of my tactical kit had mold growing off of it. My rucksack had mold. It was covered in mold. um But I had all of my clothes and my stuff inside that ruck ah was inside of a waterproof bag.

20:03.47
Jeremy
So the stuff inside of my ruck.

20:04.48
Keith
Ooh, smart, smart.

20:05.81
Jeremy
Yeah, because I I use a contractor bag, the like the ten, the six mil or the thick, you know, thick, thick ones.

20:12.52
Keith
Mm

20:12.66
Jeremy
Um, and then I also have roll up dry bag inside of that.

20:17.14
Keith
hmm.

20:17.22
Jeremy
Um, so all i my like clothes that were still in the ruck.

20:17.32
Keith
Mm hmm.

20:20.81
Keith
And that's that's the kind that can be like submerged underwater, right?

20:23.80
Jeremy
Yeah. Yeah.

20:24.51
Keith
Yeah.

20:25.11
Jeremy
Yeah. So, um that stuff was dry and i had like my tough box was inside of there. The stuff that was inside of my tough box, it was, you know, generally dry.

20:38.16
Jeremy
There was actually some dampness that had gotten in there. um But inside of my tough box.

20:42.51
Keith
Where were you storing your food? Hmm.

20:46.92
Jeremy
Yeah. So the cooks, they do their thing. um And we are allowed to bring food. We're just not allowed to eat our own personal food or drink in front of the students. So.

20:58.13
Keith
Oh, you were able to eat the food from the the product from the the ah whole thing, the camp. Like there was food there for you guys.

21:05.05
Jeremy
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So um the Montagnards, and I've talked about them before, they're from Vietnam.

21:10.97
Keith
Mm hmm.

21:12.64
Jeremy
um they We have two guys, they're primarily our cooks, and those dudes, they throw it down, man. um

21:19.16
Keith
i you know I looked that up back when we did that episode. that's a Those are real dudes. That's a real thing.

21:23.08
Jeremy
Yeah, that's a very real thing.

21:24.33
Keith
I've never heard of that phrase until you said it, and I had to look it up. and i mean I went down the rabbit hole and researched on it. like dipped It's a long historical a group of people that do that are that good at what they do.

21:32.23
Jeremy
Oh, yeah.

21:36.23
Jeremy
Mm-hmm.

21:36.72
Keith
Crazy.

21:37.02
Jeremy
Yep. Yeah. um And so these guys, you know, they they cook. And um the first like day or two, the the like the part of the role is that we don't have much food inside of our camp because we're just, you know, a bunch of refugees.

21:53.19
Jeremy
um But then we start, you know, getting the networks set up and all this different stuff. And then we start getting produce and One of our drivers, he raises meat chickens.

22:04.28
Jeremy
He texted me before he did it. He's like, hey, dude, I'm going to probably be bringing in some chickens. I'm like, bet we could definitely handle that. I didn't realize that he was just trying to get rid of chickens.

22:17.30
Jeremy
This dude brought a total of 34 chickens into the damn camp.

22:21.60
Keith
Oh my god.

22:21.77
Jeremy
like it Well, he dropped them off. And, you know, we have to actually.

22:25.58
Keith
and Alive or dead?

22:27.37
Jeremy
Oh, no, they're live. he He dropped them off.

22:29.02
Keith
What?

22:29.85
Jeremy
Yeah. yeah He dropped them off in batches of like 10 or 12 inside these like small kennels.

22:37.42
Keith
oh my god.

22:37.59
Jeremy
And, and it's great, but we have to hike out and then go get them and then hike them back into our camp. And four of them were fricking roosters.

22:37.75
Keith
Mmm.

22:47.98
Keith
oh

22:48.31
Jeremy
So day three, or it was probably like day three or day four, you know, the Montagnards, they come up to me and they're like, you know, Hey, we're going to go ahead and cook chicken. And I was like, kill every single one of those roosters right now.

23:01.50
Jeremy
Cause I want them, i want them dead. i hate those stupid things. They, these roosters, and they were really pretty birds, but man, they were mean.

23:12.03
Jeremy
And all of the meat chickens that he brought in, um, they're not pretty chickens. They're not, they are bone ugly chickens and they were all female. So these males, these these roosters were just, man, they were not nice to those girls.

23:27.61
Jeremy
And so one whole meal was just straight up roosters, like straight up roosters.

23:27.59
Keith
Oh no, they never are.

23:34.97
Jeremy
And i even convinced the Montagnards to, I won't say it was a trick, but I got them to make rooster fries and there's two couple of students ate them.

23:47.21
Keith
What's rooster fries?

23:48.77
Jeremy
You've never heard of rooster fries.

23:50.58
Keith
I've never... You gotta do tell.

23:52.89
Jeremy
Rooster fries are the fried.

23:54.78
Keith
Don't tell me it's that's the stuff hanging off their head.

23:56.01
Jeremy
Yes, that's exactly.

23:57.00
Keith
Oh, my God.

23:57.22
Jeremy
That's exactly. no no, no. Not their giblet hangs. They're they're nuts.

24:01.03
Keith
oh

24:01.67
Jeremy
They deep fry their nuts.

24:02.38
Keith
What?

24:03.23
Jeremy
Yes. They bread.

24:03.66
Keith
No way.

24:04.88
Jeremy
I'm telling you, they bread and fry their nuts. And these guys were like, well, when in Rome and I'm like, go ahead, bro. Yeah. Yeah.

24:13.86
Keith
Wow.

24:15.18
Jeremy
and yeah um

24:17.72
Keith
not Unless I have to, it said the shit has had to do seriously hit the fan for me to be eating some fucking chicken nuts.

24:21.79
Jeremy
yeah

24:25.89
Jeremy
Yeah, it's, um, but it's not, and some people do it with more than just because this, we're going back to like peasant, you know, peasant food, you know, the scraps that were left over, they made use of, you know, everything.

24:37.39
Keith
Right.

24:40.44
Jeremy
Um, some people will also use the giblets, which is your liver, the gizzards, the heart, you know, all of those things. And they just, all they do is they cut them up and they deep, you know, they bread them and deep fry them. That was, that was peasant food back then.

24:55.49
Jeremy
um But the, the Montagnards are experts in that. They, they of course they, we had a bunch of cadets this class too, because it's summertime and, and you know, the lot of the colleges and the military academy, they, they let out and they send their cadets out um to do different stuff to get kind of, you know, real world experience.

25:17.56
Jeremy
Um, we had 14 or 15 actual cadets from different colleges and, um, you know, they're enthralled by all of this stuff. They've never seen, these are 19, 20 year old kids.

25:30.90
Jeremy
So they're watching these Montagnards grab a rooster by its feet. You know, the chickens just flapping everywhere and he just, swings it and smashes its head into a tree and and then gives it one more good whack and then gives it a spin and there goes the head and they they were like, oh my God, he just killed that chicken like that.

25:52.50
Jeremy
I'm like, hell yeah. And you're going eat it too, aren't you?

25:55.66
Keith
That's because their chicken comes from McDonald's and the grocery store.

25:58.11
Jeremy
yeah yeah So, um again, back back on on track, but so this glorified, glamorous you know idea of bugging out, um I would just tell people this. if If it had to come down to it, um hopefully you do have a place to go.

26:17.82
Jeremy
um but if you do not take the long-term effects of the weather on you and your stuff into consideration, you are going to be absolutely miserable and your health is going to start to suffer.

26:32.19
Jeremy
So, and I know that because back in Afghanistan, 2012, I did have severe, severe bilateral transfer. I almost lost a couple of toes and being in the water and i had the opportunity to change my shoes. And I even brought my muck boots with me.

26:49.96
Jeremy
They're waterproof from the outside. But once your pants have become completely saturated and they start going into the boot, your boots are now wet on the inside.

27:01.42
Jeremy
So I'm walking around and I knew there was some water in there. I knew it was a little bit. I just didn't realize that it wasn't a little bit. It was a lot of bit. So I'm slopping around and then the back of my heel started to hurt.

27:15.02
Jeremy
And I'm like, you know what? I know what that feels like. And I'd go and I'd go slide this stupid boot off and the back portion of my heel came off. And it wasn't terribly bloody or, you know, nasty or anything like that. But I had to try to figure out a way to dry out the inside of my rubber boots, um which I never did.

27:36.75
Jeremy
and never got to wear them again because they were completely moist on the inside and I didn't have a way to dry them without sacrificing some clothing. um

27:45.29
Keith
It reminds me of ah in that movie, We we Were Soldiers, when they when the guys were hiking and the he told the the one guy told them to take your boots off and lift and check each other.

27:48.34
Jeremy
Yeah.

27:55.08
Keith
And I guess they had to powder them up and and change socks and all that.

27:56.98
Jeremy
Yeah. Yeah. It's a constant struggle. Um, and in the infantry, you know, cause i was raised infantry. Um, that is a daily, if not several times a day kind of thing.

28:10.70
Jeremy
Um, you'd slide your socks off, let your feet air air dry. put some powder on them. And then sometimes you actually had to turn your socks inside out, put them on the other side. And, and because you only have so much room to put your socks um because you have other stuff that you have to have.

28:29.86
Jeremy
And, you know you have to You have to figure out what is what's worth sacrificing for as far as room. Me personally, I would give up space for more t-shirts to have more socks.

28:42.55
Jeremy
um I would...

28:44.45
Keith
Right. And if you're in a bug out kind of a situation where you're you're thinking, oh, well, we'll just build a fire and we'll hang up our our socks up. Well, okay. You have 12 people in your in your group and every one of their shirts and pants and socks and underwear all wet. Where are you hanging this stuff?

28:59.17
Keith
How big is the fire going to be?

28:59.36
Jeremy
Exactly. like Yeah. And how many fires are you willing to have? And are you willing to have a bunch of fires that could potentially bring in unwanted people? So these are, these are all of the things that, you know, again, there's a thousand YouTube videos and check out my bug out gear and check out this bug out location and blah, blah, blah, dude.

29:09.93
Keith
That's right. That's right.

29:23.42
Jeremy
At this point in my life, um If you said, hey, what we're thinking about bugging out, I'd be like, go right on ahead, homie. If it gets to the point where I think it that it's dire straits, there could be loss of life or it is that extreme, perhaps.

29:41.07
Jeremy
But and just to bug out on a whim? No. No, the majority of my preps and my gear and my stuff and my fortresses are here for right now. um And if that changes, it changes. But if not, this is this is it. you know I know where to go.

29:58.35
Jeremy
i do have a location to go to.

29:58.81
Keith
Yeah. And also, you you know, you're smart enough to know that you could find another fortress as well.

30:05.47
Jeremy
Yeah.

30:05.94
Keith
You know, the last place you want to be really is out in the wild.

30:06.71
Jeremy
Yeah.

30:10.71
Jeremy
Oh, no. Yeah, no.

30:11.44
Keith
That's the last place.

30:11.51
Jeremy
Uh-uh.

30:12.46
Keith
People say, well, I'll just go under a bridge, you know, we'll get some boxes.

30:14.63
Jeremy
Mm-hmm.

30:15.63
Keith
And no, you're not because it's going to be really nasty.

30:17.35
Jeremy
No. Yeah.

30:20.01
Keith
And not only that, but you could have gotten sick in your tent from breathing all those, ah you know, all those where the come spores that are coming out of that stuff.

30:22.78
Jeremy
Yeah.

30:29.06
Jeremy
Yep. Yeah. So what I,

30:29.87
Keith
It's not the mold that hurts you. It's the spores that come out into the air that hurt you.

30:33.33
Jeremy
yeah. And I did develop a cough. Um, and so the weather again, raining for two weeks straight.

30:36.08
Keith
Oh, I imagine. Yeah.

30:42.48
Jeremy
And there's another factor about that, that people probably don't think about. And that's the danger of, of weather. So, um, the area that we were in word was general, it was a gentle slope, but it was sloped and it was sloping down, um, which creates mud.

31:02.12
Keith
Ooh, slippage and and trip you know trip zones and all kinds of stuff, trip had tripping hazards, stuff like that.

31:03.72
Jeremy
Yep.

31:08.93
Jeremy
Yeah. Yeah. and so it created a lot of mud and it created a lot of, uh, uh, a lot of loose ground and on a gently sloped hill here in, you know, North Carolina were mostly pines and the root ball on a pine isn't as sturdy as a lot of people would think.

31:30.31
Jeremy
You know, they see this massive pine tree that's, you know, eight feet around and, 65 feet tall and it's 400 years old, but the root ball only goes about three and a half to four feet in the ground. There was trees falling down all around us every single day and not just like branches, whole trees were uprooting and coming down.

31:53.59
Jeremy
So we constantly had to keep an eye on that.

31:54.52
Keith
wow

31:57.39
Jeremy
And um another thing that you know nobody really thinks about this is that as it continues to rain and the water is hitting the ground and it's moving leaves and dirt,

32:09.72
Jeremy
all of those things, um as soon as that rain lets up, guess what it exposed? All of the critters that were in the ground that have now had the opportunity to come out.

32:23.96
Jeremy
We had people getting stung by yellow jackets um almost every single day.

32:27.97
Keith
Wow.

32:30.55
Jeremy
Thank goodness nobody was you know allergic. um I got stung. I got stung right in the crook of the arm um on the very first day, and it got me right in the vein. And it still hurts now.

32:42.31
Jeremy
it It actually, ah got me just in the absolute worst spot, just right in the vein.

32:42.96
Keith
wow

32:49.79
Jeremy
um And and that's these are just those little those little nuanced things that people don't think that is going to happen to them.

33:01.32
Jeremy
Um, so there's the hazards of the weather besides just the mud and the, and the muck and the, and the slips and all those different things. The very last night we were there, you know, the next morning we were going to, uh, culminate and then end the exercise and pack out about three o'clock in the morning.

33:19.74
Jeremy
For some reason i was, something woke me up. It was a weird sensation. It was a weird feeling. It was something, it was like three, three 30 in the morning. I remember opening up my eyes And i could hear noise and I had been dreaming about rain and a lightning bolt hit right in the center of our camp, not but 15 or 20 feet from me.

33:42.10
Jeremy
And when I say it actually hit in our kitchen area and one of the students for some unknown reason was up at that time.

33:42.70
Keith
Whoa. whoa

33:52.84
Jeremy
He was probably the one on watch. um He just started screaming, everybody up, everybody up, everybody up. And I thought at first that it was the cadre who had gotten angry or they were going to blow out you know the students and for some sort of punishment reason. But everybody was freaking out.

34:14.85
Jeremy
And I could hear some of the female cadets in the back. They were screaming and you know just... I'm like, oh my gosh, dude. So I throw on some shoes, throw on a t-shirt and I start running from tent to tent, you know, checking on people, individually checking on them. And of course, none of those young kids had ever been, ah you know, near or affected by a lightning strike. I have.

34:38.07
Jeremy
um So I'm going around and I had to check each and every single person And they were like, oh, my gosh, I felt it in my hands. I felt it in my hair. I'm like, well, yeah, it's about a thousand volts of electricity that just came in here through the ground.

34:54.16
Jeremy
But it's not just, you know, there's the danger of getting hit by lightning. But there's also the danger of the lightning hitting the ground and being conducted through the already saturated running water.

35:05.26
Keith
I'm getting electrocuted.

35:07.08
Jeremy
So that was a real danger. And there were a couple of people that didn't get like electrocuted, but they did definitely get a fuzzy feeling. And in talking with this student, i I asked him, I was like, what did you, what what did you experience? And he said, right before it happened,

35:26.42
Jeremy
the hair on my arms and the hair on my head felt like it was standing up. And I was like, yep, that's classic. You know, I was like, the the lightning was looking for you individually because you had become negatively grounded against a positively charged ionosphere.

35:43.73
Keith
Yeah, most people don't realize that that lightning actually comes from the ground. Now, we see the bolt come from the sky, but the light but the the electrical charge itself is coming from the grounded part, the ground, which is why they call it ground.

35:49.66
Jeremy
Mm-hmm.

35:54.84
Jeremy
Yep.

35:57.08
Jeremy
Yep.

35:57.13
Keith
And, ah you know, the the lightning up in the air has these sort of feelers that you don't see. And when it finds, well, in that case, you, you know, with your hair sticking up, then the bolt decides to come down because the least the path of least resistance is the path that lightning takes.

36:13.36
Jeremy
Yep.

36:13.46
Keith
If you feel if you feel that when you're out in a storm, get on the ground as fast you can.

36:18.31
Jeremy
Yeah. Yeah. um The first time it happened to me, um it was during field training exercise many, many years ago. And um I had this platoon sergeant who found out that when I very first entered the army, I used to be in communications.

36:34.36
Jeremy
So we used to have these really, really old, ah they're basically phones and they're connected by glorified speaker wire. And he was like, Hey, help me out, get all this, you know, whole area rigged up, you know, with all this different wire. And I said, yeah, Roger.

36:49.29
Jeremy
So I went out and I actually connected each one of the fighting positions with these different phones. And the weather started to turn and i was testing the system when in the distance, not even really super close to us, but in the distance, lightning struck the ground, traveled through the ground, went into that wire into my ear.

37:09.44
Jeremy
And um it burned me, you know?

37:12.67
Keith
Like from a headset or something?

37:15.49
Jeremy
Well, it's like a hand mic. um

37:17.10
Keith
Oh, okay. Gotcha. Yeah.

37:18.08
Jeremy
Yeah, but all of these different... So essentially what had happened is by connecting all of these different phones, which have us like a C or an D battery inside of them, um and a couple of them have a hand crank, by connecting all of these phones with wire, even though it was buried...

37:36.86
Jeremy
um I basically created a target for for the lightning because all of those charged lines were now connected into a big circular pattern.

37:42.58
Keith
Uh-huh.

37:50.04
Jeremy
um But it yeah, it burned my ear and it was just because it went through, and just went through the ground and into the wire the speaker wire basically and through the headset into my ear.

38:02.23
Jeremy
So I know what it's like, but people can get killed instantaneously by hit beginning hit by lightning. you know And that's probably something that a lot of people don't think that would ever happen to them.

38:17.23
Keith
No.

38:18.41
Jeremy
But it's actually, it's a lot more prevalent than a lot of people think. It's, it's, I forget the statistics, but there is always a possibility, depending on where you live and the conditions that you could be struck by lightning.

38:34.57
Jeremy
um And my own philosophy is, is if you do get struck by lightning, that's, that was meant to happen for some reason.

38:42.38
Keith
you

38:43.86
Jeremy
um But again, all of these things go back to this this conversation of bug in, bug out, you know, this is going to be sweet. and You know, I'm going to go and live by my own wits and 43 MREs.

38:58.76
Jeremy
No, you're not. It just, it.

39:00.28
Keith
When I first started prepping, I thought that it would be awesome to be able to take all my stuff and go out into the woods.

39:04.22
Jeremy
Mm-hmm.

39:07.33
Keith
And I would be that you know it would be Rambo. It would be just awesomeness.

39:10.60
Jeremy
Yeah.

39:12.17
Keith
And it's so... You know, and it's funny because as you get older, the older you get... the more that whole scene does not interest you. but you know when you're When you're like ah you know an 18, 19, 20-year-old, you think, oh, it's fun.

39:25.15
Jeremy
Oh, yeah.

39:26.26
Keith
I'm out there. I'm wet with my friends and you know everything's fine. When you're 40, 50, 60, or 70, that's bad. You don't want to be wet all day. It's not it's not good at all.

39:35.34
Jeremy
Oh, no.

39:35.49
Keith
and we we And as preppers, we always talk about Winter, we ah we we harp on winter and snowstorms and cold, how it can kill you, and we harp on heat in the summertime, but we rarely ever talk about wet.

39:50.30
Keith
And it's probably the one biggest danger from out of all of them.

39:54.19
Jeremy
Yeah, and I would say that the older that you get and as your skin starts to lose, it's you know it's it's elasticity and your skin starts to become a little bit more loose.

40:06.57
Jeremy
um the the danger of stuff like trench foot and being soaked all of the time, it starts to pose a lot more risk as you get older.

40:18.55
Jeremy
um your body Your body can no longer absorb you know that much external um ah liquid, basically.

40:18.94
Keith
Oh yeah, for sure.

40:28.07
Jeremy
And you're the danger of your skin just starting to slough off is a lot higher the older you get. um And you know when I started this journey basically as a kid, you know Red Dawn, of course, the original Red Dawn.

40:42.53
Keith
Right. Exactly. that would to me out To me, I was like, why why?

40:44.42
Jeremy
ah

40:45.61
Keith
What are they complaining about? I would love to do what they're doing.

40:47.06
Jeremy
Right. Yeah. yeah Everybody, you know at least in our era, was like, yeah, I could absolutely do that. You absolutely can. And you will most likely absolutely not last very long.

41:00.13
Keith
you'll You'll hate it.

41:00.42
Jeremy
yeah You'll hate it.

41:01.96
Keith
Movies and shows like that, they they make it very glamorous.

41:06.21
Jeremy
Yeah, they do. Yeah. And, you know, I know of people who have chosen to live the hermit lifestyle and they have lived off grid for the majority of their life and they've been documented and, you know, they've chosen to live that way.

41:19.09
Keith
Mm-hmm.

41:19.27
Jeremy
But they also have, they're living in areas that have seasons and are fairly much predictable. um There's a lot of people that actually live that life in the Ozarks, in the Appalachia.

41:33.64
Keith
Mm-hmm.

41:33.95
Jeremy
um But you try to live that life, say like in South Texas. No, man, you're not going to do it. No, you're going fry. You're going to fry or you're going to get swept away in a in a crazy flash flood because we have those down there too.

41:43.61
Keith
Mm-hmm.

41:49.95
Jeremy
um But again, the lessons learned from this is if you think that you have to bug out, don't don't imagine to yourself that a bug out, unless you're going to a predetermined location that is already supplied,

42:08.43
Keith
Setup.

42:08.51
Jeremy
do not yeah Don't think that you're going to be able to have enough supplies to just go out there and and just hermit it out for the rest of your life because you're not. and It's the simplest stupid things.

42:21.55
Jeremy
you know Running out of to able to running out of powder just to be able to powder up your Ghiblis or your feet. Imagine running out of that and how much chafing you're going to go through because one, your last pair of underwear is completely soaked.

42:38.27
Jeremy
You're walking around, you know, free balling with your wet pair of pants on. And if you've never had chapped inner thighs because your legs are super skinny, I'm sorry, but it's extremely uncomfortable.

42:51.01
Jeremy
If you have never had prickly pear prickly pear prickly heat um to start to develop on your back because you can never get your back dry.

42:59.39
Keith
Mm-hmm.

43:01.50
Jeremy
It sucks. It sucks. And people think, well, you're not going to get prickly heat in the rain. I'm sorry, but yes, you can. You absolutely can, especially if you're hiking a lot with a pack on your back.

43:15.58
Jeremy
If you're hiking a lot and you're constantly wet and you're constantly dirty, I guarantee you, you're going to develop a prickly heat on your back, down your butt, on your legs.

43:27.22
Jeremy
And if you're wearing an old military style ruck like I have, if you're not, don't have it padded, you're going to have the shape of a cross on your back because that's exactly where that prickly Pete's going to prickly heat's going to develop.

43:39.87
Jeremy
um Yeah. And, you know, the last point I'll bring up on it as far as the weather is a lot of people think, well, I'm out here in the rain and I don't feel thirsty and, you know, I'm fine.

43:52.77
Jeremy
No, you're not. You still have to force yourself, even if you have to force yourself to drink water and take in electrolytes because your body's tricking itself to thinking, well, I'm out here. It's kind of cool. It's wet all the time. I'm not dehydrated.

44:08.33
Jeremy
You absolutely are. You have to force yourself to to drink water on a regular basis and take in electrolytes because even in the cold or the cool or the wet, you can still go down as a heat casualty.

44:22.87
Jeremy
Just the same as if it was of 100 degrees outside.

44:26.09
Keith
exposure.

44:26.36
Jeremy
you Yeah, you have to have water. You have to And exposure is going to kill you faster than dehydration is going to kill you. You know, it's, that's why they tell you in the rules of three, you've got three hours for shelter generally, like depending on the weather.

44:43.30
Jeremy
If it's extreme, you got about three hours. um You know, i when I set up my tent and put on my gear, it was that day that we, you know, actually got everything set up.

44:48.94
Keith
right.

44:56.06
Jeremy
It was dry that night, the rain started. And it didn't let up at all, except for that one particular day. um And I didn't even really get the chance to get anything dried out.

45:11.11
Jeremy
I was able to take the rain fly off the top of my tent to get some airflow. um opened up the windows, you know, try to get some airflow through there. But what I ended up having to do is on one of the the times that I had to go outside of the camp, um I stopped by a Dollar General. I grabbed a couple of bottles of rubbing alcohol and a spray bottle.

45:35.75
Jeremy
And I went absolutely berserk on all of my gear, um all of my clothes that I had already been wearing. um i started spraying everything with rubbing alcohol to kill all the mold.

45:46.90
Jeremy
Um, and it's even some of the stuff that I have is still stained. I mean, I've washed it thoroughly, dried it, you know, it's been sprayed.

45:57.26
Jeremy
It's stained from the, from the actual mold spores. So yeah.

46:01.17
Keith
You lived it, man. You know, I mean, we're we're trying to tell everybody out there the the thing and, you know, the the truth about these things.

46:03.86
Jeremy
Yeah.

46:09.42
Keith
You just lived it. You just went through it.

46:11.57
Jeremy
Yeah.

46:12.27
Keith
You know, I didn't. i have a house. So when I get soaking wet, I'm outside all day. When I get soaking wet outside, I go in the house and I change clothes.

46:18.95
Jeremy
Mm-hmm. And, you know, you think about it too, like the way the human body is designed in the heat, right? We sweat and then, you know, hopefully a breeze comes along and that, you know, the breeze hits your sweat and it's supposed to cool the body off. That's how we naturally, you know, do stuff.

46:34.22
Jeremy
And anybody who's worked outside a lot during they're in the heat and they get saturated with sweat and then dries off and you get that that white crust, that's the salt that you've expelled outside of your body.

46:47.61
Jeremy
um And that's one of the one of the points of that is is that's where we start talking about electrolytes. like People underestimate how much salt you actually need. Just get one of those pairs of clothes that you were wearing in the heat and it's saturated.

47:02.48
Jeremy
And now you have to replace all that, but you can actually see it when it's hot. Now take that and still sweat that much, lose that much electrolytes, but you can't tell because you're constantly soaked in water because it's raining all of the time.

47:22.29
Jeremy
that goes back to that emphasis of drinking water, taking in electrolytes, salting your food, and doing all of the things that you would normally do. But because you're constantly wet, you have to force yourself sometimes to actually do it.

47:36.91
Jeremy
So

47:38.22
Keith
Final thoughts.

47:39.86
Jeremy
um get good gear. And try to waterproof your gear as much as you can.

47:44.33
Keith
Amen.

47:48.00
Jeremy
And um just realize that even the best gear and the best waterproofing eventually is going to break down. So you have to find ways, redundant ways, to protect what you have in the event that you actually do have to bug out.

My Prepper Brothers and Sisters…

….. We’ve often talked about chaos and the instinct to run from it. At some point, Bugging Out will make sense and the forests will be our first choice. We’ve considered it, planned for it, and practiced it whether in person or in our imaginations. And tonight, we were faced with one of the realities of that bug-out location. Woods and forests and remote rural locations can hold a wealth of materials that we can gather, collect, and harvest to help us survive for an extended period of time, away from the chaos erupting in the cities.

But the wilderness is not the haven we’ve all made it out to be. We must consider it a beautiful battlefield. Exposure is your enemy in that battlefield, and it never sleeps.

The heat will burn you. The cold will shock you. Rain will soak you, turn your gear damp, invite mold and mildew, and strip the fight from your bones. If you underestimate it, even for a moment, you’re done.

That’s why we train. That’s why we prepare. Shelter. Fire. Water. Clothing. Respect for the elements and what they can do to us. Respect for our bodies and gear and the limits of both. Survival out there isn’t luck. It’s skill and knowledge and planning… and practice.

Rifles and gadgets are a must have when the cities fall. But if you can’t endure the elements, exposure wins, and you will not survive.  

Stay Prepped… Stay Happy….

Thanks for Listening… And, Goodnight…