Green Beret Teaches You How to Survive Any Situation - Mike Glover

Imagine you're in a situation where you have a compromised femoral artery, you're bleeding out, and you're waiting for the first responder who has an average response time of 12 minutes in most areas in the country, and you bleed out in three. A $29 piece of equipment and a little bit of training that you could literally get from YouTube could save your life. Why would you not pay attention to that? What's your background? Why should anyone listen to you about how to be prepared for anything? Yeah, I I I think mostly my background is in the military and the CIA. That's what kind of I'm I'm known for, but I don't think that's why I am the expert at preparedness. I think kind of as a leader and as somebody who's managed a lot of people in the military, uh I know how to connect people who are assets, subject matter experts, with people who are trying to get information to make themselves better. So, that's kind of how I came to the conclusion that um civilians needed preparedness in their life. So, nothing complex. I think my field of experience is very narrow, very specific, and in its totality has a lot to do with preparedness, but not specifically. You need experts in all the fields, which I am not an expert in. I'm just a collaborator. I'm the conduit between experts and you and people. I call it podcast smarts. So, it's the kind of it's the level of knowledge that I've got on most topics. Like, I don't actually know it inside out. I know it enough to be able to have a podcast about it and to hold a conversation. But, if you want to go out and do it, if you want if you want to go build a bridge, you can't speak to me. I can have a conversation with you about a bridge builder I once spoke to. But, like, you need to find the man that builds the bridges, and then you can speak to him about how to build a bridge. So, yeah, I think um podcast smarts or preparedness smarts, perhaps, is is a good uh a good way to look at it. What One of the questions I had, I actually asked um Shawn Ryan this and Andy Stumpf. Why do you think it is that members of the CIA, people who are working for the CIA, are seen in such a different light to people who are in the special forces, especially given that there is quite a regular conveyor belt of special forces to CIA? Um it just seems to me that there's a branding or a marketing problem with regards to how the operatives working in three-letter agencies are perceived by the wider public. Yeah, I think it's a lot to do with the idea of cloak and dagger and, you know, operating with certain privileges and all the things behind the curtain. You know, I I had an idea until I started working with the CIA, and I'm like, "Oh, they're just like me, you know, super intelligent, highly capable human beings with endless budgets." But, I I think a lot of the perception is based in the uh I don't know. I I think it's based in fantasy. It's based in Hollywood. Um it's based in books that I grew up reading on the Office of Strategic Services and the CIA. And so, I I think that's a good thing partly for the culture, um but I have seen it be the bad thing in many instances because, you know, I've I've rolled with case officers who thought they were Jason Bourne, and I'm like, "No, no, no, no, no. You're not Jason Bourne. You're capable. You're a case officer. You're intelligent. But, you're not Jason Bourne. That doesn't exist." And so, I I think that helps with recruitment. It's like kind of like the Buds program for the Navy. It's a genius marketing tactic. Why? Because everybody wants to be a SEAL, and then when you go in, and the Navy knows 99% of everybody who comes in is going to wash out, well, then you have the needs of the Navy. You could fill the ranks and fill the positions that nobody else wants to do um with a very smart and sound marketing tactic. Um so, I think part of that is is the reason why I wanted to be in the CIA. Um but, I think that's for a reason, specific reason. Speaking of Jason Bourne, you were briefly labeled as a domestic terrorist, weren't you? I was. I was um I was in my organization called American Contingency was identified as a militant violent extremist organization. And they didn't say I actually was an MVE. They said I was capable as an organization uh as a pass-through entity of potentially, you know, recruiting and facilitating domestic terrorists who wanted to use our platform um as a place to hang out. And I think that's any place to hang out. I mean, certainly there are social media platforms where people do things like that. But, mine was um personally identifying me as the potential problem because of my background, which is ironic, right? You You're a Green Beret, you're CIA guy, you do all the service, you do all the selfless service and sacrifice um thinking you're doing it for the for the good, and then on the tail end of that, you're kind of seen as the bad guy. I I I think it's the a natural storyline that uh uh was bound to happen to everybody, especially somebody coming out, you know, like Shawn Ryan and Andy Stumpf talking about their experiences from those organizations. I'm not surprised. It sucks, but I'm not surprised. Yeah, is it is it almost like the government getting concerned at someone being a little bit too independent? That's what it feels like a little bit to me. Like, you you you you you know, we want to whatever it is, a well-armed uh populace or whatever it says in the Declaration of Independence that you guys have got. But, it's like, but not that competent. Like, well-armed, but incompetent or like not sufficiently well-sophisticated. And yeah, if you've got yourself to the stage where you guys can, you know, basically rally together a pretty competent army, that's the sort of thing that might be seen as a threat. Yeah, I think anytime you take ownership of anything, then you're a threat to some other institution, business, entity because you're taking that independence and you're disaffecting somebody else's independence. Uh you would have previously been reliant on them. 100%. And so, if if the idea in a government is um you're not empowering the people, but you're providing them services that they're dependent on, and you're centralizing everything, when those people try to decentralize and take back their self-reliance, um that messes the system up. I mean, it's like the idea of like um going out and finding um natural medicinal means to make your health and wellness better. Like, if you do that, well, you're potentially in droves, uh you know, moving an audience, moving a market, you're disaffecting Big Pharma, and that's not a good thing. So, if I'm working like a business, I'm looking for marketing tactics to counter and debate all the things that you're doing. In fact, I'll go out of my way to suppress and shut you down. So, we advocate for self-reliance and taking back that reliance in your life that you normally outsource to institutions, um because the efficiency and the optimization that you bought into isn't necessarily beneficial nowadays. And I And then I think that's that's across the board. That's in security, that's in health care, that's in education. And so, I want people to take that back, and that's a threat to somebody out there. Mm. Okay, so, justify to me, British person, right, who comes from a country that doesn't have the same types of risks, perhaps, that are over here in terms of weather, uh in terms of firearms, in terms of the mental health of some of the uh homeless people that exist. There are a a number of big differences despite the fact that we speak the same language. Why is preparedness such a huge risk? Or why is the lack of preparedness such a huge risk? Do we not have institutions that can already step in? We've got hospitals, we've got police officers, we've got supermarkets. Like, what's the case for preparedness? Yeah, it's a very interesting one. We get asked a lot of that kind of question depending on the country and the place in the world. And I just did a book deal with some European countries of selling that book overseas, uh the book I wrote Prepared. And and that's very interesting, but all we have to do is go back just a little bit in time to 1941, the beginning of World War II. And when we look at what was going on in the country, there were superpowers. There were countries that were accumulating power by disenfranchising and suppressing and oppressing people around them. And they were doing so behind a veil. You know, there wasn't a lot of advertisement of these things that were going on. You don't typically show your hand. And then all of a sudden, they were taking over countries. I mean, the United Kingdom British uh the British were being bombarded by Nazi Germany, and that didn't take a lot of moves to get to catastrophic circumstances where it was too late. In a modern society, just look back a year and some change, when we thought this could never happen to anybody in modern civilization, and Ukrainian officials are handing out AK-47s and rifles to middle-aged males that were willing to fight for their country because they didn't have the power. The government, the institution had the power. And there was an agreement sovereignty-wise that the government was going to be able to take care of the people. But they can't when a superpower decides, "I'm just going to go into your country and just take it over." And that would never happen. And it just happened. And name that with the things that took place in this um in this world over the last few years, including the pandemic. And you realize that a lot of the bargaining the agreements the protocols and institutions that we established was all about efficiency. And there was there was a unspoken agreement that I was going to pay taxes and all these institutions around me were going to handle everything. Well, that's the case until it's not. And when it's not, as an individual, what are you able to do to take care of your family? So, at a high level, yeah, preparedness is important for communities, cultures, countries. But at a very low level independently there's things that you need to be able to do in not so catastrophic circumstances. Not talking about the world war. I'm talking about the supply chain breaks. I'm talking about the natural disaster hits. Are you able at the tactical level, I would as I would describe it in the military, are you able to take care of your own? Um if you can't take care of your own and you have to wait for the institution to take care of you, that's a problem. Because, you know, all it takes is a couple of those things to happen and to converge. And like Malcolm Gladwell said, there'll be a tipping point and it typically all rolls downhill after that. So, I think preparedness is important um at the very visceral connected level with human beings day-to-day. And at the higher levels for countries and, you know, European Unions and collectives to think about it as well. It's a nice uh reminder, I think, as much as the war in Ukraine doesn't need to probably didn't need to happen in order to be a symbolic reminder for everybody. It is one that for people to think, "Ah, you know, 1941, London. Ah, we're an ascended species now. We're We're beyond that. This isn't anything that we need to be concerned about." No, you do. You do. There are There are There are still scenarios. I I I tweeted something the other day. This is what Andy taught me about um 76% of 18-to-24-year-old American men would be ineligible to serve uh in the armed forces because of health or criminal record problems that obesity and and other sort of health complications. And um I quote tweeted it saying America's if there's a land invasion. And I got a bunch of responses in the replies explaining why America would be really hard to invade by land. And I was like, "That's not the lesson to take away from this issue. Like the lesson to take away from this issue is that you have a very unready populace. Not that, "Ah, yeah, but there's lots of water in between us and Japan. Ah, yeah, but, you know, Russia wouldn't be able to sneak around the the top of Greenland. Ah, yeah, but, you know, there's mountains in the middle of the country." Yeah, sure. Like that's That's correct. But relying on structure as opposed to relying on capability seems like a weakness. Yeah, completely. And I you know, that statistic relates to body mass index and lack of upper body strength. I mean when a benefit a proxy benefit of freedom is convenience. The problem with convenience is sometimes it gets so convenient, you're complacent. And that complacency leads to risk, right? And it happens It's kind of like the first It's like the full circle of life where you have it all until things are so good, then something's bound to break, and then you kind of reset everything full circle. And I think that's where we're at as a society. We have it so good. And we We have it so good, we manufacture things that we think are bad. And that's a first world problem. It's like the rest of the world's problem, which are very real problems that have to do with a hierarchy of needs and survival, like the lack of food, the lack of lack of basic health care. Um the lack of medicine to treat disease. These things are real problems. We We are manufacturing things and when you look at readiness, when you look at capability that is the lack of preparedness. I feel like with me and Andy, with me and Shawn, the guys that I know that I grew up with in the military that are kind of doing what we do generally speaking, we're all doing the same thing. We're trying to build resilience back into the population. Whether that's through education, through experiences, through podcast, whatever it may be, it's about building resilience back in this country because we feel every single day that it's slipping away. Everyone will immediately think when you talk about preparedness about guns and food. I That was where mine mind went to. Right, so what particular specific type of everyday carry weapon with which particular site and which particular ammunitions and how many kilos of do I need? That's the first place that everyone goes to. But I think you make a really good point that there are elements of mindset that people need to build as a foundation before you think about any of that stuff. Yeah, it's important. And I knew that was going to happen. And it's a stereotype I've been fighting uphill in a battle since the beginning of Fieldcraft Survival, because um let's be honest. Like a prepper, the tin foil hat guy living in a aluminum RV in the middle of Arizona um who's preparing for the apocalypse um is not a good representation of what we're talking about. And, you know, I I talk about catastrophe and even in the front of my book it says a manual for surviving worst-case scenarios. But worst-case isn't necessarily the zombie apocalypse. Worst-case could be the accident. It could be the trauma that you experience. And it certainly could be scaled. It could be the worst worst thing. But our ability kind of as a as a species, as a as an American citizen to recognize what our worst day is, I mean, we see guys going into fight or flight, smashing their head on the steering wheel um completely losing it emotionally because we don't have a good baseline of resilience built in our culture. And it's kind of slipping away. And what do you need to repair that? Well, you need hardship. But how much hardship do we have living in climate-controlled um boxes? We drive in a box that's climate-controlled. We walk 10 ft through 125° heat index index in Texas and we're back into another climate-controlled box. So, we are certainly going through the the comfort crisis. Um and I think that resilience is very important to build back in because it's not about the EDC pistol. It's Those are statistical improbabilities. If you look at statistical probabilities all the statistics that I see in mental health decline. I associate drug overdose with fentanyl. I mean, that's that's 100,000 Americans likely to be the leading cause of death in men, if not already, this year on track for that. Um when I see violence spike, murder rates spike, I think that is a a demonstration of the lack of resilience we have in our communities and in our people. And and that's a problem. And and I hope the book as positioned re-educates people on that. Um but certainly the stereotype is something that I'm going to continue to fight uphill. So, talk to me there about the biggest risks statistically that people don't think about. Something tells me uh for instance, terrorism is covered in the newspapers. It's like 25%, I think, of headline stories about threats. And yet heart disease kills 60% of people. So, there is a disparity between what people expect and what reality is actually going to provide them as a risk. What are the biggest risks statistically that people aren't thinking about? Yeah, that's a very um interesting question because you're you're absolutely right. The national media and the headlines will kind of determine the messaging and how we are manipulated to understand the world around us. So, if you're watching social media and you're seeing the world burn down, you feel that way until you go outside and you realize that's not the specific case. But in some places as a statistical probability uh for example, drug overdoses are at a record high. A great example is San Francisco. You know, I I I criticize Gavin Newsom because he seems very arrogant in the position that he is as a politician bragging about the status of his state, California, which I was born in. I actually started Fieldcraft Survival in California and moved out when I saw it falling apart. Uh the statistic is in May, you know, a month ago 74 people died on the streets of San Francisco in one city. Yes, heavy population, but 74 people died of drug overdoses. 69 out of those 74 actually died from fentanyl specifically. I think fit fit no overdoses are a direct um attack on our security. I think it's a national security threat. Because if you track it and trace it, it's coming from China, being shipped to Mexico, and being brought in by the cartels. That is definitely a national security risk when you're looking at 100,000 Americans that are dying. Now, you take 74 just as a number and you compare it to mass killings. Mass killings, the estimates are between 85 and 95 casualties of mass killings, which is four more deaths in a mass killing. So, if you hit the net national media headline news, you would think systemically there is a cancer of mass killings taking place all across this country. From January until now, there's been 85 total deaths. In one month in one city because of drug overdoses, which I think is a mental health issue along with homelessness and all the things that are combined a recipe for disaster, there's been nearly the same number in one void of that. And so, I look at statistics and it's very important to highlight them because it's facts. Now, when we're weighing statistics compared um or comparing our lives and our daily routines to the world around us, what's likely going to kill you? Well, it's not going to be the self-defense gunfight or the mass killing period. It's not even going to be the drug overdose. It's likely to be the vehicle accident. Right? 40,000 Americans die every single year in vehicle accidents. More important in the statistic is 2 million people are injured out of the 6 million accidents that takes place in vehicles across the country. But, how many people are on their cell phone, putting in their makeup, and eating a Subway sandwich at the same time while driving their vehicles completely at the loss of focus? I mean, we're automating vehicles to drive for us so we could do those things. Now, lastly, let's set aside that statistic 40,000. You have a statistic of gun deaths in this country and it's around 60 plus thousand depending on the institution and the way they measure the stats. But, 60,000 Americans per year. And you would go, "Oh, well, Mike, I told you so because 60,000 Americans die from guns." Except the missing point in the statistic is 60% of that is from suicide. So, now if we weigh all the risk in the world around us, what's most likely to kill us is the lack of resilience and the breakdown of our mental health. Because all of that leads to, I don't know, binge eating, which is the number one cause of death in cardiovascular disease. So, we have to pay attention to it all. It can be overwhelming, but it like how I try to outline in the book is like I want people to think about probabilities, to think about things that are likely to happen to them. If you're in Florida focused on an earthquake, if you're in California focused on a a a, you know, a cat 5 hurricane, then you're thinking about your environment wrong. All those factors matter and the statistics matter the most. You mentioned car accident there as probably one of the most common most likely high-risk scenarios that an everyday person is going to get themselves into. And this is a It doesn't matter which country you're in, right? I mean, America does have some very bad drivers in it. The the driving test is not sufficiently rigorous over here. Um but, what are the fundamentals? Let's say that I mean, paying attention to the road, not using your phone while you drive, not trying to put your makeup on or eat a Subway sandwich whilst texting probably to get started. But, what else? Let's say that it is you wake up this morning and without knowing it today is the worst day of your life on the road. What are the things that people need to be aware of? The most common errors that they make in terms of preparedness, mindset, and everything else. Yeah, there's there's two specific ones that come to mind. One is situation awareness. We have a complete loss of situation awareness in the world around us because we are immersed in our phones. I mean, a shocking statistic is um teenage girls spend anywhere from 3 and 1/2 to 7 hours a day on social media. And that is a scary statistic. With that, I believe 53% of them claiming to be anxious, depressed, and having suicidal ideation. That's scary. So, we set that aside, situation awareness, and not paying attention is killing people the most. I mean, texting especially on your phone is going to kill you the most. So, when you're paying attention because the phone is down and you create a rule, you're like, "Hey, if we're in this vehicle, we're not watching TV, we're not watching YouTube while we're driving, we're not doing distracted things. We're putting the phone down and we're focused on driving." When I used to drive in Libya, I spent nearly a a year in Libya, fascinating country at the the top of Africa. And if you called a Lib- a Libyan an African, they would scold you to death because they don't think they're Africans. They they think they're Arabs, uh which they distinctly are. And in that culture, if you drive to an intersection, there likely is no lights and there's a right-of-way. It happens to be to the right. Like, the people to the right of you have the right-of-way if they arrive. Uh it's not who arrives first, it's the people to the right. Most fascinating, if you're driving next to somebody, um and you look over to the right and they're an inch ahead of you, then they have the right-of-way. So, if they decide to veer into your lane, you have the obligation to slow down, stop, and avoid contact. They don't have an obligation to even look in their blind spot by looking over their shoulder. And the reason that's fascinating is because there's not a lot of vehicle accidents in Libya. I mean, I would drive from the State Department, from the embassy to my base of operations where I was running a a counterterrorism program at the time, and it would be a 30-minute drive. I would never see an accident. Take that same thing when I was stationed at Fort Carson, when I was driving from Monument, Colorado to Fort Carson, Colorado, a same 30-minute commute, if there was inclement weather, there was any kind of change in the pattern, you would see distinctly three, four, five, 10 vehicle accidents depending on the severity. The other part of that is most people die in vehicle accidents when they overcorrect because like you said, we don't have a protocol for teaching defensive driving. We're more focused on parallel parking as a check-the-block prerequisite for driving than we are actually handling the vehicle and understanding how it works. So, if you go off the right side of the road and you lose traction, the overcorrection, which is a reaction that's natural to jerk the steering wheel the opposite direction, you think would self-correct you. Except you don't have traction. You have a loss of traction. So, then when you overcorrect the steering wheel and you come back on the road, immediately you gain traction, which slingshots you into oncoming traffic causing head-on collisions. That's the leading cause of death in the mistake. So, how do we fix that? Well, we talk about it, we understand it, we implement it in the training, and then we have people go through extra training, like defensive driving training. And that one little step in by identifying like, "Hey, people are dying here. What should we do here?" That one little fix could save thousands of lives. But, again, we've outsourced the institution to go, "They need to be responsible for it." Well, they're not going to fix it. And if we identify that, then we could fix it ourselves because we have this thing called free will. Just do it yourself. And a lot of these things that I talk about, they're nuances and a lot of people they hear it and they go, "Ah, yeah, yeah, whatever." Well, it doesn't matter to you until your child, your loved one gets in that vehicle accident and you go, "It was so preventable. It was something so simple if we just paid attention and just put a little effort, we could have avoided that mistake that led to death or injury." What should everybody have in the car in terms of uh tactical preparedness? Yeah, that's an easy one for me. I and I I do derive this from my experience. Me and Shawn Ryan worked together in the same office. And when we were down range together, um which is kind of similar in a semi-permissive environment to America, right? You're you're in a a decent place, you know, going about your business, and everything's cool until it's not. And so, you have to be prepared. The first thing I would recommend is a mobile trauma kit or vehicle trauma kit, which is basically a first aid kit meant to address the things that you would experience in a vehicle. Like, if you have Band-Aids and bacitracin in your vehicle, yeah, sure, but that's more likely to be used in a first aid kit on a hike. If you're in your vehicle, you likely need burn bandages. Cuz if you put gauze on a burn from an accident and you treat yourself that way not understanding how to do it, you're causing infection. You're causing issues. So, I think all these things are important. First aid is the start point to that, especially for stopping the bleed. That's a basic tourniquet. We recommend any N A M T certified tourniquet, Tac Med Solutions, uh SOFTT Wide, North American Rescue's CAT 7 tourniquet. These are certified, tested, evaluated in combat to stop the bleed. And we tell people like, "Yeah, a lot of people don't think about this." And they don't want to put the effort in it. But, imagine you're in a situation where you have a compromised femoral artery, you're bleeding out, and you're waiting for the first responder who has an average response time of 12 minutes in most areas in the country, and you bleed out in three. A $29 piece of equipment and a little bit of training that you could literally get from YouTube, from Fieldcraft Survival's YouTube channel, could save your life. Why would you not pay attention to that? Lastly, I would say survival and maintenance are equally as important. I mean, uh 22-year-old girl died in Buffalo, New York with 17 other innocent people who got stuck in a snowstorm. She died in her vehicle 6 minutes from her home. She literally could see doors of houses, but she called her family, FaceTimed them, and said, "Hey, I'm stuck in this snowstorm. I don't know what to do." And she stayed in the vehicle. The exhaust got covered with snow, it blocked it out, the carbon monoxide went up into the vehicle, and she died. It's like, what a what a senseless death with a little bit of education. Have the tools and survival and maintenance and recovery that you're going to need in the worst-case scenario. Mylar space blanket, a wool blanket, hell, a sleeping bag in the back of the trunk. If you have the capacity, if you have the space, you might as well have the equipment and the training as well. I remember talking to Tim Kennedy about this, and he was saying he couldn't believe how many Americans don't know how to drive stick. Now, in the UK, that's very, very common. And he used this example of saying, "Okay, so you and your kids are away on some lovely holiday up in the mountains somewhere, and the car breaks down. And the only vehicle that is left to drive home is one that isn't an automatic. And you've got a bunch of different families together, and maybe somebody's injured, and you need to go and get things, and you need to bring them back, and you need to get people away to the hospital, and you don't know how to drive a manual car. Yeah. I I I think immediately about um you know, this this idea of outsourcing to institutions. The reason we did we do that is because we get back time, right? Time is one of our greatest resources. And when you get that time back, how about you reallocate it into going to Sheepdog Response, going to Fieldcraft Survival, going anywhere, go to your local driving academy, and learn to get those hard skills that are so important in this type of world. Um I mean, with that same example, think about the people who can't change the tire on their vehicle. They don't know where their spare tire is at. They they don't know where um you know, they they know the button they got to push, they know the phone number they have to call to get AAA out to their location, and they would rather wait for 6 hours on the side of the highway than take the 10 minutes to learn and literally change a tire on the side of the highway. And And look, it's not a man skill. These are like people skills. Like, if you don't have these basic skill sets, these hard skills and the education, man, you're setting yourself up for disaster. And that that's what that's what I'm like fearful of the most, which is what motivates me every single day cuz I'm like, people don't understand the basics. And when we start getting the affirmation of the feedback of saying, "Hey, I took that turn at the class, it took me 5 minutes, and it saved my life for somebody I love's life." It's like, man, it it's so simple. We just need to get back to basics. Thinking about mindset again as well, how can people learn to eliminate the freeze response? Yeah, it's a big one. There's two components of freeze. The first component of freeze that we uh typically understand is fight, flight, or freeze. It has to do with a sympathetic nervous response, which is a basic um mechanism of survival. It's actually the mobilization tactic for survival, right? Your central nervous system activates your physical body so you could survive the the leopard attack, right? That's one component cuz we freeze as an advantage of maintaining surreptitious movement to not be discovered by the predator as we are the prey, and we continue to move. The most important thing that I've discovered I I actually first discovered this from Amanda Ripley from her book Unthinkable, which I mean, I'd love to talk You should You should podcast Amanda Ripley. She's a That book's amazing, Unthinkable. And when when you hear about the story from the Virginia Tech shooting, she talks about this mechanism of freeze that is a actual parasympathetic phase. So, we rest and digest, we go to fight or flight, and then it's hypoarousal. Where hyperarousal is the spike in the curve, then on the backside of it you have hypoarousal, where we're frozen solid. It's like the same things possums do, where they pretend the faint their death. Why? Because, I mean, it's a smart tactic in the animal kingdom. Like, if I'm dead or if I look like I'm dead, I mean, a possum actually um secretes a foul-smelling odor, which is gross, and I don't recommend people poop on themselves, but it's like, that's a good tactic. So, in Virginia Tech, the shooter goes into a classroom after murdering multiple people in other classrooms, a total of 33 innocent lives taken that day. When he goes into the classroom, he shoots every single person in that classroom, except for the student who put himself in a contorted position and fainted his own uh death. He pretended to be dead. He doesn't even know why he did that. He actually said, "The only thing he thought was if I pretend like I'm dead, I maybe he'll bypass me." And he did. The fascinating thing is when he tried to move, when he tried to get himself up, he couldn't feel his legs. And he actually had the thought, "Getting shot isn't that isn't that that that bad. It doesn't hurt that bad." But he hadn't been shot. Well, one, he had disassociated the actual experience because that's what you do under intense trauma. It's recognized in sexual assault victims. Um it's recognized in children who are assaulted. And he couldn't feel his legs because natural opiates were transferred into his body, some scientists believe, to make the transition from life to death a little bit easier, which I find fascinating. But that mechanism of freeze exist in you. And I tell people like, if you train, if you educate yourself, you have all the tools. What you might not understand is under stress, the suppression of it, you might activate a trigger. It might even be a memory that's faint in your mind or that you haven't even recalled that activates this freeze response and freezes you up where you can't move. And that isn't necessarily a good thing. At Virginia Tech, it worked out for him, but in a situation where you need your hands, you need mobility, it actually might set you up for failure. So, both mechanisms of freeze are important to understand because the more you understand it, the more you could understand the symptoms as they take place, like the sweating palm, like, you know, the heart rate accelerating, and you can control those things before it happens. Andy Stumpf told me about a um it may have been Sheepdog Response or it may be one of the things that he's involved in, and they're using simunition rounds, and I think that there is a a person being belligerent as you are supposedly walking back to the car from a supermarket, and this person comes towards you, and you're told everybody's watching, and you're told these are the things you need to decide if you're going to pull the trigger, when to pull the trigger. And he was like, "The number of people who are going to life are going to prison for life for murder in that scenario is huge. That This is simunition rounds. Everybody is aware that they probably should be erring on the side of caution because they're literally being observed by people that are going to judge them for this. And as soon as a bit of pressure gets deployed, the decision-making criteria begins to fall apart. People's ability to be rational, their ability to be calm, um it just falls out of the window. And he was like, "You're you're going to jail. You're going to go to jail for the rest of your life for that for that scenario. It's crazy." Yeah, that that course is actually uh from my company's training called Personal Security, which is a simulation-based uh self-defense course. And it's fascinating. I mean, it's the most fascinating thing that I think um most tactical or self-defense trainers don't focus on. Like, everybody wants to focus on the nuance of shooting the gun into the paper to the steel because that dopamine you get from the gun exploding in your hands feels good. It's like, "Oh, that was fun." There was exhilaration. But those endorphins that were released in that experience have nothing to do with the actual events that are going to take place suppressed under stress. And what we find and and Andy Stumpf teaches this class with me, what we find always is the people who train literally the most in the technical skill set, the specific thing, when put under stress, go high and right, which is just a an example of them going extreme. And And you go, "Wait, so you just killed this guy in an open parking lot, and why did you do that?" Well, he was going after my wife. Yeah, but he was lunging at your wife, but he didn't have a weapon. He didn't say he was going to harm her. He said he actually wanted food or money. And you shot him in the back five times. This has literally happened in our course. And it's like And these guys are like, "Yeah, but but that that's what you do, right?" It's like, "No, no, no, no, no." And then you look at the students, you say, "Who here would put him in prison for the rest of his life?" And everybody raises their hand. There's not There's not even a a question. So, the the question for people is, "Yes, hard skills are important to train, but have you took those technical skills and exercised them in the culmination of stress?" Because that's what disaster is. So, you have to be able to make rapid decision-making in real time. It's why I am highly critical of guys running and gunning on flat ranges as an exercise in demonstrating their tactical capability. That's not even what it's about. That's choreographed. What's important is taking those technical skills and knowing how to discriminate friend from foe, knowing when to make a rational, legal, and just decision under stress in a millisecond. It's fascinating. It's one of my favorite parts of training, but it's the most important thing that we do is culminate and inoculate civilians under stress to make them understand why it's so important. We We do it all the time, but it's so important. What do people not understand about reasonable force, about the use of firearms, about when you can and can't deploy them appropriately? The The biggest factor is their their personal decision point. I mean, I I do a scenario where I I I stand everybody up, and we walk through a narration of a situation where somebody's entering their house. And And you'll never believe like the extremes that we get where it's like, the person walks in, and then somebody sits down, which represents them, "Hey, I shot the guy." And then the scenario continues, and the person shot the guy as he came in the door, and there's a whole bunch of people still standing, then a whole bunch of people sit down through the scenario, and at the very end, I'm like, the the guy has a gun pointed to your loved one's head, and he's prepping the trigger, and the person still hasn't sat down. So, in our culture, depending on your background, your experiences, your training, where you come from, really establishes your criteria for using deadly force. So, if you say to the normal people, "When would you use deadly force?" They'll typically give you the legal jargon. "Well, I would use deadly force when my life is in jeopardy or comp- And I'm like, "No, no, no, no, no." That's from the concealed carry handbook. I'm saying, "When would you actually use deadly force?" And and we talk through it, right? And we we wargame it. We do course of action development. And that's the point, because when you start doing that with that Q&A session with the student, they realize very quickly, they've never thought about it. But, you're on the range on the weekend shooting the human target that represents a bad guy, but you never thought about the criteria and the decision that you morally and ethically and legally can shoot somebody? And and that's the disparity, the breakdown in the whole chain. It's like, we're we're you know, we're trying to build the cart before we even thought about the horse. Like, you need to do both simultaneously. And I think history now is showing us across the country that even when you think you have the right intent, moral justification, legal justification, that there's a potential of a DA who has a skewed perspective of self-defense bringing in a jury of not your peers, cuz they don't think like you, and then convicting you of murder. It just happened in Texas, and it's likely going to happen uh to this Mr. Penny, former Marine, who winded up killing accidentally killing Jordan Neely, um this Michael Jackson impersonator. What was the story in Texas? The story in Texas was there was a protest, and this guy was in the army, he was part-time Uber driving, and he dropped off his customer in the middle of this protest, which bad move anyway, he gets surrounded, and kind of gets locked into position. He's got a pistol, and a one of the protesters has an AK-47, walks up to the vehicle, and he uses deadly force. His justification was the guy raised the gun towards him. There's video evidence that shows the the gun aligned, but not him raising it. And and but there's also a post of him saying, "If that ever happened to me, if I ever got gridlocked in, I I would I would show these people what's up." You know, I'm paraphrasing here. Mhm. But, essentially, when you take all the evidence in totality, seemingly, the jury is like, "He wanted to get into the fight. He knew what he was doing deliberately, and he took somebody's life." But, I'm like, he's in a castle doctrine state of stand your ground in Texas, which has some of the most lenient self-defense laws in the country, and he's in a vehicle um protecting his life seemingly against a man with an AK-47. Um he said he didn't have one in the chamber. One in the chamber or not, it's like, "Wow, that's clear-cut case of self-defense." He wasn't He wasn't carrying Israeli. This doesn't We We don't need to be too concerned about that. Exactly. So, it's like, clear-cut case, but not so clear-cut when he's got just convicted of 25 years in prison, which is crazy. Yeah. Well, this is one of the things, this man, like I I don't really understand. I'd love to get a legal expert on to explain this, but it seems like over time, by the nature of precedents being set, which inevitably encroach and create holes in what are much more smooth understandings of what the law is, it seems to me like almost like the law of entropy, that over time, laws are inevitably going to become more and more messy, because you have more and more precedents that allow you to either be convicted or let off based on one or another previous historical case. Yeah, the the the precedent that's being set now is unprecedent, right? I mean, the the the legal justification um for convicting some of these people who, by the way, there are a lot of states that have good Samaritan laws. Like, if you bypass somebody in need, um you'll get convicted. But, they're not leaning so heavy on prosecuting people who are bypassing other human beings, but they're heavily politically messaging that if you get involved because you're a vigilante. I mean, Daniel Penny is considered a vigilante. And all the circumstances in the lead-up, at least from the evidence that I've analyzed, of the facts of the case, it's like, man, this guy was just trying to do good by protecting people around him, and yeah, tragically, this man passed away, but this guy wasn't innocent. So, it's very complicated, but that precedent leaning forward, especially in those states, in those cities, in those towns, is scary, because there's a breakdown in the institution, right? The breakdown is, "Well, why didn't the police get involved?" I mean, this guy was arrested 44 times, this Jordan Neely guy. And it's like, "Well, why didn't they protect the people?" Well, it's so political, they won't to get involved, because there's so much liability. So, it's like, you're damned if you do, you're damned if you're don't. And so, it's like, just stay at home and lock yourself behind a closed door, and you won't ever have to worry about it. But, it's like, who wants to live that way? There's an interesting um trend that I noticed since moving to Texas among some of the guys that are very, very competent with firearms, and um I I think you mentioned it before that there are some people, and I noticed this among some of the guys that I've gone shooting with, and I I'm sure that they're all very, very responsible gun owners, but there are some where I get a sense, true or not, that they almost want a kinetic uh incident to occur. That there's almost like a yearning for it, like a a leaning desire for there to be a a reason to put these skills finally to use. Yeah, I I think that's spot-on, and it's scary. I mean, but at the same time, I understand it, because I understand men. You know, there's there's a fighting spirit in all men, in most men. And and that outlet is limited when you don't have conflict, when you don't grow up and allocating that energy in the right place. Uh I it's why fighting, it's why virtue signaling, it's why military veterans like me and Andy Stumpf and Shawn Ryan are very popular. It's because we live that life in the global war on terror, and we're able to fight, and we have those experiences. But, what do you do when you're a 14-year-old American boy growing up today, and there's no conflict, there's no nothing to fight for? Yeah. And where you divert that energy? And your persona becomes 2A. I mean, 2A's not just like a Yeah, I'm I'm all about the Second Amendment. It's like, that's my identity. And so, I remember being a young staff sergeant Green Beret and thinking, "Man, um I'm judged by my peers, because they don't know if I have the capability of taking out a bad guy." And and in that culture, if you never killed a bad guy, then you're really nobody until you cross that threshold, and it's like, "I can trust this guy now. I know he's capable." You've earned You've earned your stripes in some regard. Yeah, you've earned your stripes, and you're a warrior now that could be trusted. Well, I I'm afraid that's happening a lot, and I see it, and it's tragic. Kyle Rittenhouse in that whole circumstance is a prime example, where people were like, "Yes." And then the comments are egregious. It's like, this is a very tragic circumstance altogether for both Kyle Rittenhouse and the situation he's put in, and the victims. Yes. So, what what what you're what you're saying there with with the Kyle thing is that um there were people who felt righteous support um for a vigilante that was able to do the thing that they hadn't had the opportunity to do. Yes, exactly. And and and it's part of the culture, but I we me and Jocko were just recently talking about this. It's like, a lot of these guys, they want the fight. They think they want the fight. Yeah. But, it's like, do they really want the fight? Well, well, another one of my friends, Justin, who lives out here, I like terrifyingly competent. I've seen this guy, and he's not got a military background, but he just takes his shooting incredibly seriously. This guy's so competent with all manner of different weapons, all sorts of different platforms. And um I I brought this up to him, this sort of uh how would you say, like, myth of vigilanteism, or this leaning desire for for a kinetic encounter. And um he said that as he's gone further through his training, he's actually become more and more reticent about using his firearm, because in his words, he was like, "I know that there is a very, very high likelihood that if I ever do pull the trigger with the gun pointed at somebody, it's the last time I'm ever going to touch a gun in my life." Yeah, that's a very good case. Yeah. A- And and think about the legal ramifications, the moral uh ramifications that you live with for the rest of your life. I mean, I I know guys who have actually used their gun in America in self-defense, and the story isn't about the incident that took place. They're not virtue signaling the incident. They're talking about all the drama that took place post the shooting that had to do with the legal uh system, had to do with um whether or not they were going to be free or be in prison for the rest of lives, the amount of stress that it caused in their lives. And it's like, guys, you don't want that. Like, the best way um to be on the up and up, to be a protector and a defender, is avoid conflict in the first place. I mean, that that's just a you know, it's an old martial art art mantra. If you have the skill sets, good for you, but it's a last resort. Is that you? Is that when you go into a restaurant, are you always sat in a table in the corner with the chair facing the wall so you've got the broadest range of view? Is that still something that's embedded in you? It is. I I I don't think I could ever get away from that. And you know, I've talked to a lot of my peers growing up in the military and we all have that mentality. And it it's about security. It's not an inconvenience for me. It's it's honestly it would be more of an issue if I wasn't able to do that because I would be thinking about it otherwise. Like you know, it just happened recently. I go out with my girlfriend. We're we're hanging out at dinner. My back is exposed and I said, "Hey, can we just swap chairs?" And for her, it's not a big deal. She knows who I am, but that's ingrained in me. As a protector and as a defender because I want the tactical advantage. I want to be on the offensive always. And that helps me mitigate risk. Because if I see the situation unfolding, I can get my family off the X. And and with having children and people around me that I love, I don't want confrontation. I mean, I think Jocko said it you know, it's like run away. And and run away as fast as you can. Because there's no ego and there's nothing good going to happen in that kind of conflict in the country. It's nothing good of that is going to happen. So, do your best to avoid conflict. Let me give you this one, man. I've never told this story on the podcast before, but this is a this is about Jocko. So, I have Jocko on the show around about a year ago and I fly out to San Diego to go and see him and we sit down and we have this really interesting conversation running for like 2 and 1/2 hours. And you know, he's big scary man that's killed people. Like you know, he's an intimidating dude to sit across from, but it was it was I really enjoyed it. And one of the guys that we had as a part of the film crew was on the super tight angle. So, if people go back and watch this episode with Jocko, they'll see that there's this really really tight up super super tight crop. It's almost just his forehead and and eyes. So, there was a guy very closely watching what Jocko was doing with his eyes for 2 and 1/2 hours, right? Wow. And as he as we finished up and we were packing up, he came over and he said, "Dude, you see what you see what Jocko was doing with his eyes throughout that podcast?" I was like, "No, what do you mean?" He said, "Well, when you were sitting back and you had your hand off the desk, his eyes were looking in your face. But as soon as you lean forward and you put your hand on the side of your laptop, around about every 5 to 10 seconds or so, for just a split second, his eyes would just dart down and look at where your hands were. Every 10 seconds, they would dart down." And I was like, I was sat 70 cm away from this guy and I didn't see it. But the dude that was looking through the camera, only looking at his eyes, was able to detect it. And that that just really made me think like there are levels to situational awareness that people who have been in extended periods of active combat with really really bad bad actors have got incredibly acclimatized to. Yeah, it's it's so fascinating. I mean, we talked about it in depth recently and and he was talking about taking his walking his family and down the road and he's looking for you know, last covered and concealed positions and uh you know, he's looking at the planter pot and thinking, "Hey, can I hide behind that in the middle of a gunfight?" while they're like walking down the sidewalk going to get ice cream. Yeah. But but it's it's often a very deliberate trait that becomes so ingrained it becomes habit. You know, I I took a lot of behavioral dynamics courses, executive communication, a lot of these courses that taught me about uh deliberate observation. And now it's a part of my pattern and a routine. And what he was doing was assessing hands because it's not called a foot gun, it's a hand gun, right? It's that's where the threat comes from. But also demeanor. But hands from somebody who's uh sound tactically and has a lot of experience, they they don't give you the demeanor hits. There is no demeanor, right? Most operators who operate very well, you don't get demeanor hits, but their hands will be doing the deed. So, hands demeanor is the constant vigilant scroll that we're taking in the information and I I find myself constantly doing that and quickly assessing it where it can't even And it's it's a very cool story because um you would only know it if you dialed it in and you could see the rapid eye movement and and tracking the hands, which I think is fascinating. Yeah, so good, man. Um talk to me about demeanor. I don't know you talk about peacocking and how demeanor can both be almost um an offensive or a warning tactic where it can cause you can act in a manner that disincentivizes people from doing things. What's the what is there to know about demeanor? Yeah, I think demeanor on the offensive and defensive side is important to understand. For first of all, um you know, we say like EDC is important. Everyday carry is important because those are your tools. But what's more important in in your EDC than your pistol in your waistband is your posture, right? Because on the offensive side, your posture, your eye contact, being clear and concise with communication breeds confidence. And when interviewed, you know, criminals when interviewed said disorganized people were typically the most exploitable. It's the uh criminals went after that the most. And so, if you're disheveled, if you're disorganized, if you look chaotic, you look exploitable. You look weak. And so, uh in demeanor, when we're assessing demeanor, it's basic body language. But sometimes that takes um an understanding of how to assess people in different environments. So, I I call it spike in the pattern. You don't have to individually assess hands demeanor, hands demeanor, hands demeanor. You could look across the entire spectrum of a restaurant and assess audibly, visually, is there any anomalies? Is there any spikes in the pattern? Is the person yelling in the booth in the back corner? Well, that's an anomaly. What's typical is when we identify specific demeanor that we recognize as a trait that's going to uh de-evolve, to go bad, we kind of write it off. I mean, that's our way of being lazy. We would just write it off. We say, "Oh, that's not a big deal. They're just arguing." But what if the person's poking the other person in the chest? Well, that's about to be a physical confrontation. And then what if the person's putting their hand on the backstrap of a pistol in their waistband? Well, you're about to be caught in the crossfire because you have a plan to identify cuz naturally we do. I mean, your vagus nerve is good at identifying environmental factors that control your physiological profile. It's like, "Hey, what are we going to do?" Activate the nervous system. that experience? It's fascinating. I just watched on I'm I'm big into YouTube. Um I watch your stuff on on YouTube and I watch all my favorite people on YouTube. And I get I go down rabbit holes when it comes to central nervous system kind of stuff. And I found this video. Um these different guys do it. There's a guy like Texas Bushman or something like that. And he hides in a planter. Um and and I believe it's That would not be near Jocko's house. If he hides Oh, it better not be near Jocko's house. He's He'll get hit. He'll get head butted. Yeah. Um but he acts like a plant. And he acts like a bush and he's wearing like a ghillie suit with foliage. And when people walk by, he stands up. And almost everybody has a reaction. And that's their vagus nerve telling their body to react. You know, they're being hyper-aroused from a very you know, baseline rest and digest phase. When they respond, most of them respond and they start giggling and laughing cuz they realize, "Oh yeah, it's not that big of a deal." What I tell people is identify the spike in the pattern. Be prepared to be flinch responses, Tony Blauer would say, but then have a plan of action with that information. You know, people are upstairs and they hear a noise downstairs. They don't react to it. They don't respond to it. And it's like, "Why?" Well, it's cuz they're lazy. Like things aren't happening creating noises as apparitions. It's like something's causing that. Get off your butt and go investigate. So, when you see somebody's demeanor, think action. Like, "Hey, that dude didn't have good demeanor. Like the way he looked at me, the way that he uh physically postured on me, I don't like that." And a lot of those indications and behavior getting ahead on the offensive side will allow you to immediately respond or react on the reactive side. You know, we say uh reaction is always slower than action. Not if you have a heads-up display and are being situationally aware. When you identify those things, have a plan of action and you'll be ahead of it. I I think behavior um I think um demeanor hits are very important cuz it's just it's a deliberate way to assess our environment where otherwise we normally just be completely oblivious to everything that's in our environment. I suppose this offsets this lack of situational awareness that is pretty pervasive at the moment. You mentioned everybody's distracted by their phones, et cetera, et cetera. But if this is just a little bit of a cue every so often just remember to put your head up to look around. You got another story. So, one of my friends was in a bar in Tokyo. And this is a long while ago now and he He me this story. He he ascribed it to almost like some astral sixth sense that he's got, but I think he would probably claim that this guy just has very, very high inbuilt situational awareness. And he is able has in the past just notice when something's going to go wrong. So anyway, they were sat at this bar in Japan and you may have seen these sorts of um bars before. I think they're quite popular in Asia where the um floor is all at one level, the table is at the height of the floor and then the floor sinks in and you almost sit on the floor with your feet descending further below the floor. And this is this sort of cool style of of bar that he was at in Japan. Anyways, they were with his wife who knows him and knows the way that he acts and knows that he has this sort of heightened situational awareness astral realm skill, whatever it is. Uh and he's got two friends. Another couple are with him. And he was sat facing the bar, this long bar, relatively busy evening time of some venue somewhere. And he just something felt off, little spidey sense tingle, wasn't sure what it was. And he gave it a couple of seconds. And then he said to his wife, "We need to get under the table." And his wife immediately said, "Okay." But the two people that were with him, they didn't know that this guy has this particular insight and that he tends to be right more times than he's wrong. They said, "We're not getting under the table." He's like, "I'm telling you, when I say get under the table, we need to get under the table." Sure enough, he convinces them and they get under the table a couple of seconds later. Literally 5 seconds after that happens, this guy pulls out an automatic uh rifle and fires at the bar. Nobody gets killed, but it turned out that it was some gangland uh dispute between two different groups of people. And this guy had sprayed the room with an automatic weapon and then flared and it was all this big thing went on. And obviously everyone else has got their hands in the air. Meanwhile, my friend, his wife, and the couple that they were with uh literally below the ground. And they were there 5 seconds before. Wow. Yeah, I I think that intuition is the vagus nerve taking in all the data points of information, including pressure. I think uh you know, it's not often talked about, but pressure, environmental pressure, uh from human beings, which is their their raised sense of awareness. And you know, whether there's cortisol or adrenaline, that spike in elevation creates pressures on other people where you sense that. I mean, people around me moving through a crowd. It is. It's a wave of energy. And when you feel that, that intuition to respond and react is what saves you. I mean, it's like you know, I I feel that pressure, I'm going to stop right here and then, you know, the the brown bear bypasses you because all that energy is in the air and I think that's important to note because we all have a sixth sense. We all have that intuition and it's based on our experiences and based on our our situational awareness. I'll message Jim. I'll tell him that he should have gone and been a a Navy SEAL or a CIA contractor. Um okay, you mentioned earlier on about that we hear a noise downstairs, etc. It is, you know, the apart from I guess active shooters and mass shooters now because of how much attention they've been given by the press, but I would say that home invasions are probably the you know, the long-standing fundamental fear that a lot of people have. What should people be thinking about when it comes to fortifying their home, when it comes to preparing for this, and then if they do hear something or if there is some sort of an incident moving through that scenario? Yeah, it's a very interesting question. I mean, I I just taught a course this weekend in personal security, all women's. And one of the ladies asked me, um "Hey, is it appropriate in self-defense to rack a shotgun?" And I said, "Well, what's the circumstance?" She said, "Well, if somebody comes in the house and then I rack it, do I mitigate risk?" I said, "Certainly you do, but if you're racking a shotgun, which is how you cycle the operation or chamber a round in a shotgun, you're using the wrong shotgun cuz the gun should already be loaded. There should be one in the chamber and you should use a semi-automatic shotgun. But sure, do what you can, but if you're racking a shotgun when somebody's already in your home, you've already made several mistakes." Here's Here's one Here's one solution that you could think of. You could have a shotgun that's only for racking. And then you could have a semi-automatic one that you actually use for shooting. So one It doesn't even need to have a round in. Or you could just have dummy rounds in. So you could just rack it and that's the deterrent and then you can actually pick the other one up and go downstairs. You could likely go on YouTube and get a racked shotgun. Yeah, why do Why even have the gun? Why do you even need the gun anymore? Get on your phone, Bluetooth it to the speaker downstairs and just have racking shotgun play my shotgun playlist. Oh, you could do AKs, you could do shotguns, you could do it all. Oh my god, this this woman's so armed. This is an entire battalion up here. She's got a bazooka. I just heard a bazooka rack. Yep. Yep. Um you know, I I think a lot of people again, think about worst-case scenarios and they think about the last moment where it's too late. You know, preemptively, what we're talking about is physical security. You know, it's it's the idea of like the immigration across the border wall. It's like if there's no wall, then people porously will pour through the open terrain. It's like the first rule of physical security is obstacles and gates and fences, etc. So I always think, "Well, how many obstacles are between me and the potential risk?" So if you have a door, is the door locked? Um if you have a door and it's locked, do you have uh a deeply recessed bolt latch or locking system? Do you have a chain across it? Do you have a bar across it? Do you have a storm door? Do you have a cage door? All the things. I mean, do you have a thorny bush at the base of the window? You know, all of these obstacles are going to benefit you to reduce your chances of having to rack the shotgun last minute. And I think most importantly is technical security. I mean, I have my cell phone sitting next to me at all times because uh I'm in my studio in my basement of my house, but I have a Vivint security system that is tethered to um a whole bunch of infrared sensors that when that kicks a sensor, I get an SMS text message in my home that's linked to Starlink. So even if the power goes down, I have the ability to plug that into a battery power um a generator and still have mobile security on site that tells me of the risk before the risk comes into my home. So I I think it's an important conversation cuz home defense is is can create a lot of paranoia and fearmongering around the idea, but the last ditch effort in self-defense is obviously defending your life. And you know, we've been criticized before like um uh somebody said, "Well, um you would always go down and assess the threat." I said, "What do you mean?" Like, "Well, you will always you should always offensively go after the threat that's in your home." I said, "Why would you do that?" Like, "Why wouldn't you do that?" Like, "I have kids. So why would I offensively try to go downstairs and find the threat that potentially could be setting up to ambush me when I could put my kids in a safe room, back against the wall, a couple thresholds deep, and ambush the threat that's coming towards me? So we have to think about these complexities and go through them depending on the person, their house, and the setup. It's all important in home defense. What about dogs? Do you need to call Mike Ritland? Should everyone Should everyone have Mike Ritland on on speed dial? I have Look, before I I uh talked to Ritland about this, you know, Mike's uh a dog trainer. He has Belgian Malinois. He did it in the Navy as a SEAL. Uh he does it as a civilian now. A great dude. But he'll advocate for that. And I have a Belgian Malinois, long-haired. She's a puppy dog. She won't attack anybody. But she certainly will bark as an early warning. And that mitigates risk. I know the decibel range and the veracity veracity of her bark and I could tell, "Oh, it's it's she's barking cuz she's playing or she's barking and somebody is close to her" based on the tempo of her bark. And and that's that's what they're designed to do, by the way. I mean, dogs do that inherently as you know, genetically. Most do. Um and that's a good way to mitigate risk in your home. What is it about those Belgian dogs? What What What's What's so special about them? What were they bred for? Uh you know, Belgian Malinois are really bred for police work. They're They have good noses, but they have good instincts. Um they're also very agile. I mean, I had a Belgian Malinois save my life in combat and he paid No way. What happened? Yeah. Uh I was in Iraq in 2007 and uh we had 13 foreign fighters that were Libyan foreign fighters, real aggressive foreign fighters that were trained. Um most of them rigged with suicide vest. And when we got on target, we were already compromised. They already knew we were there. So a hellacious gun battle, uh grenades, uh gun fight. And at the very tail end of it, we were doing uh what's called a BDA, a battle damage assessment, and going across the objective moving to a limit of advance. Like we sweep across the objective and we kill any bad guys that are potentially alive and fighting. And as we are sweeping across, we came across a a bad guy that was in the reeds. We couldn't see them with our night vision goggles, but the aircraft above us with their thermal infrared sensors could see the heat signature. And so they identified him. We backed up, me and another guy named Rob that was next to me. Um the dog handler, Rick, came up behind us and we took the dog went out on the um about 15 yd in front of us and we thought the guys all the guys that we had been in gunfights were dead. This guy was still alive. Vinnie, our dog, bit him. Um, he shot one round, we heard one round, and then he detonated a grenade or an explosive vest. And when that happened, it killed Vinnie instantly, but it saved me and the other guys live life because of their sacrifice. So, they're real good at what they do. Um, my dog actually comes from a line of police dogs and military dogs and they have good instincts, but they're also very loyal and they're good with families. So, a dog could be your first line of defense, especially in a smaller apartment, condo, or whatever you got where you don't have a lot of obstacles before the bad guy gets into your door. Mhm. What's your um or what should people consider when they're thinking about handguns in the home? Or any any kind of gun in the home. I know that I don't know. The this is preparedness, but it's the era that we hear about now of accidental discharge of, you know, people carrying Israeli, etc., etc. Like, what's your what's your thoughts on this? Yeah, my my thoughts have changed since I had kids. My my my son, I have twins, a boy and a girl, and they're four, but very capable as you know, they could pick up a firearm and they understand what it is. You know, they they see daddy's firearms that are deliberately positioned throughout the house that are unloaded because I want to inoculate my kids to seeing them around and not being like I was as a child when my father was in the military and in law enforcement being enthralled by this thing that was always hidden and tucked in a drawer. And we know kids, they're always going to find the thing that's in the drawer because curiosity. And so, one thing to think about is having locked boxes that are capable of biometrics, keypads, uh, turn combinations, whatever it may be, where you have the gun at ready access, but it takes a locking mechanism as a barrier to protect the kids that are in your home. I also have a tactic where I separate the the gun from the ammunition, right? And so, if I have the ammunition and it's staged out of sight, out of sound, they don't make that connection, at least not now as four-year-old children. But, you know, I have a protocol where I'll pick up the pistol, I'll attach the magazine, and then I'll go looking for what assessing what the problem is. I also recommend especially in home defense, I mean, I I think we should be looking at this across the board, that you have suppressed guns. And, you know, suppressors, unlike the Hollywood examples of silencing the pistol or the rifle, don't do that. They just reduce the decibel ranges. That would be important because if you're conditioned for stress, if you train a lot, you certainly will not have auditory exclusion, you'll be deaf when you're in that gunfight. And we don't wear peltors on our heads or ear protection like we do on the range. But also, you don't want to shoot a firearm in the proximity of your children and put them in fight or flight where they're in the fetal position and they're screaming in shock or their hands are over their ears and you can't even get them to move. So, I I think about these things as a tactical advantage. Like somebody said, "Why would you ever have a gun with a suppressor with a light in your home? That's silly. Just use a regular pistol." And I'm like, "Well, certainly, but I want to win. You could lose, but I'm going to win. And if the difference is a suppressor on my gun with a light that gives me the tactical advantage that costs an extra few hundred dollars, why would I not do that? So, I'm always looking for the tactical advantage." What about reducing uh round carry or velocity? You know, if you're in a house, I look at some of these houses that are being built near me in Texas. You guys have interesting large houses over here, but they are made out of wood and polystyrene. You know, I I look at every home. I have a bunch of real estate in the UK and it's like rock solid 1910, 1920s brick. Hard, heavy, cold, and hot. And I I I don't even I'm in a Nerf round would probably go through most most American homes, but I imagine this is something that you consider if you are going to get into, you know, some kinetic altercation with somebody. What about the kids that are in the room next door? What about the people that live in the house across the street from you? What about whatever whatever whatever? Is that something that you consider? Oh, absolutely. I mean, it's very important to consider and weigh. I mean, like you said, most houses have generic corkboard, which is plywood that just, you know, that round at 1,300 ft per second, hollow um uh limited penetration or full metal jacket, it doesn't matter. At that speed, velocity, and foot pounds of energy, it's going to penetrate that wall depending on proximity. And so, what I tell people is one, the most important thing as a rule of firearm safety is know your target and what's beyond it, right? Uh, it's a game of angles. There are self-defense rounds that limit penetration, create vertical displacement of energy, which is very important, keeping the round intact to reduce the over penetration that we see going through human bodies, but also obstacles, which is very important. In some cases, depending on our understanding of our environment, we would want to penetrate the obstacle. Like when I was in the military, I carried 62 grain green tip, which had a steel core penetrator, because I mean, green tip comes from at least 62 grain green tip comes from um the requirement to shoot um small steel pot helmets. This is Russian era ammo. The reason we have that and we would carry it is because if we ran into vehicles, we need something potentially to create um penetration in those obstacles or those vehicles. So, sometimes you want to penetrate the obstacle. going to Would you ever be able to get some enemy assailant through a wall with something like that as well? Yeah, and I tell people I tell people think about it this way. When you train on a flat range and you're shooting paper or steel, do you train with obstacles? Typically, you don't. But, how many bad guys do you know that would just stand in the open holding the gun like this or holding the gun like this and wait to be shot? They're going to naturally find and seek obstacles. They're going to go into the bathroom and shut the door behind them. Do you have the ability to affect them? Now, standard hollow core doors, standard plywood, uh, you're going to be able to penetrate it no matter what, but I have a I have a a a solid oak door as my front door. Now, if somebody was trying to get through my door, well, what weapon would I use? You'd have a tough time at least affecting them on the other side of that with a 9 mil pistol from distance. But, if I had a .308, if I had a .556 um that had the ability to penetrate, potentially I could affect them. All these things need to be weighed and considered, especially inside the home where it's most dangerous and most likely that you're you hear the noise, you're running to defend your children potentially or your family potentially, and you need to be thinking about those. Yeah, it's the lack of applicability from range to environment is something that I I've really started to learn a lot more over the last year, you know, since not really firing a gun except beyond tourist in Vegas and all the rest of it that you do normally when you go on bachelor parties, to now spending a lot of time with guys that are incredibly heavily armed and incredibly proficient. Some of the guys are whatever it is, grand wizards of the competitive shooting. There's a couple of guys here that do um atomic legion that uh it's like a competitive shooting uh community out here. And um I was with Tucker Max, who you may or may not know, the guy that owns Sky Media, big into preparedness as well. I'm sure he'll be a fan of yours. And um we were at his house, but I think I'd turned up late or we'd maybe gone for lunch or something. So, he was shooting at a time that he wasn't used to shooting at and we were shooting with a red dot. And I was I lined everything up and we were just practicing. It's those hostage um uh targets. So, for the people that don't know, there's like a hole in the chest and then when you hit the hole in the chest, the target appears over the shoulder of the same body so that you move from person to over the top of person so that it teaches you to be able to move from the target to somebody that would be almost behind the target. And I'm like lining the shot up from not too far away and he's like, "Dude, you are miles off this." So, I'm I Is this gun dialed in or whatever? And he picked it up. We didn't realize that when the sun is low and entering a red dot target, it creates two dots. It creates a second dot and it's not as bright, but if you were in a rush and you just pulled the gun up, you would be firing and you're like 10° away from where you should be. And he realized, you know, this is a guy that's thought very very long and hard about all of the different ways that this could happen and this could happen and this could happen. And even he, as somebody that's spent all of this time, had never had his red dot facing the sun at this particular time of night because we'd gone for lunch and he thought, "Oh, Like, this is another new piece of information that I wouldn't have picked up on the range if I'd always just been shooting in the same direction." Yeah, that's the those lessons learned are so important. I mean, we use the term lights up, sights up, you know, just the the the small tactics we use depending on where the light is, if it's over your back, if it's on your sights versus it's going down, You might have to hold completely different. I I think one of the fatal flaws in training period is most people don't train low light no light and 60 plus percent of shootings take place at night or in low light. You know, most mostly we have ambient light in and around us, but how many people train at night? Really nobody does that. We offer no light and low light courses so to shoot dodge and response. Good training institutions do that, but how many of us are willing to train in those conditions but are always carrying in those conditions and and understand the statistical probability. I I like hearing stories like that because you know, anybody in the tactical space that sits on a platform or a pedestal and says this is the end all be all solution is not the right person to learn from. I mean, there should always be room for adaptation and growth. Bad guys certainly adapt, certainly grow and evolve, so should you and it's an open forum for discussion. These kind of things like like you just mentioned should be talked about, should be educated across the platform and that's the kind of industry that we need for us all to grow together. Mike Glover, ladies and gentlemen. Mike, let's bring this one home. Where should people go if they want to find out more about you and the book and all the work that you do and how they can protect themselves? Yeah, fieldcraftsurvival.com everywhere that books are found, Amazon, your local bookstore. My channels mainly are on YouTube at MikeGloverActual on my YouTube channel and then on my Instagram is mike.a.glover. Mike, I appreciate you. I'm looking forward to catching up and eating some more food next time that you're through Texas. I can't wait, brother. Thank you, man. If you enjoyed that episode, then press here for a selection of the best clips from the podcast over the last few weeks and don't forget to subscribe.