Real World Prepper Mailbag

0:02Keith You are listening to the Common Sense Practical Prepper, sponsored by Duct Tape, the real Duct Tape. It fixes everything except that decisions. Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. America. From border to border, coast to coast, and all ships at sea. Here is your host, Keith.

0:21 Hey, all this is Keith, and welcome back to the Common Sense Practical Prepper Podcast. Friday, thank goodness we made it. Friday, October the 23rd, 2026. And this is the mailbag episode that I have been neglecting for probably the last month or so. Tons and tons of emails. Not able to get all of them into this particular episode, but I will grab as many as I can.

0:47 I'm going to try to keep this about 15 minutes or so. So much going on in the world, politically, current event-wise, silver in free fall, gasoline prices were on their way down. Now they're higher than a cat's ass, as my dad would say. So much stuff going on. I may end up just write some articles and put them on buildyourark.net, Shamma's commercial plug, buildyourark.net and get them on there instead of doing full podcasts.

1:13 But we'll see what happens over the next few days and see how much time I can free up over the weekend. So a lot of folks have been writing in about Lone Man on the Ridge, saying how much they liked it, providing suggestions. Oh, that's so cool it went here. I thought maybe you were going in this direction.

1:31 As well as several people have emailed me to let me know that portions of the book have actually collided with their real lives. So check this out. A retired police officer in North Carolina, a canine officer, he has a Belgian Malinois. He's into prepping and he has chickens. So think about that for a second.

2:00 Jack, retired cop, Hills of North Carolina, Belgian Malinois, Mr. Rogers with chickens. This gentleman basically listened to the book and he's seeing a lot of himself. Now, I promise I've never met the man. I'm not stalking you. I promise, dude. But how cool, slash, freaky, slash weird is that? What a coincidence.

2:24 Now, Asheville, North Carolina is a real place. The ridge that Jack's little A-frame cabin backs up against a national forest. That's a real national forest. So what I like to do, I like to put in real towns, real cities, real streets, real restaurants, or hotels, because people who are familiar with that, it kind of ties it in.

2:45 If I say a small town in Virginia, everyone's like, well, there's a lot of small towns. But if I say Withville, Front Royal, Manassas, Leesburg, people are like, oh, I know where that is, or I know the restaurant he's talking about, or I'm familiar with I-81 that runs through the western part of Virginia, it just kind of ties it back in and it gives it a little more grounding, I guess.

3:12 So that's the reason I do that. And I guess if enough people listen to the book or read the book eventually, and I put in enough true locations, then I guess eventually those two are going to collide. So I thought that was kind of cool. Then another email from a gentleman, retired military, who is very, very familiar with Leesburg Executive Airport, which is where the last three or four episodes take place.

3:47 And how cool is that? He spent time there. So when I talk about this building or that building or the layout or its proximity to Dulles on whatever route, Route 23, Route 15, whatever it happens to be, those are real locations. So again, it gives somebody concrete to say or to go, oh, I know that place.

4:06 That's kind of cool. It just kind of brings it together. And then here's the weird one. This gentleman dated an ER nurse out of Fairfax County named Dana. So if you're far enough along in the book, Dana is a nurse out of Fairfax who is an ER nurse that is part of the compound at the Leesburg Executive Airport.

4:32 I kid you not. What a coincidence. So we have the airport. That's one thing. So he knows of the airport. Okay, great. I'll give you that. Then I say Dana, a retired nurse or an ER nurse out of Fairfax. And he's like, guess what? Back in the day, however long ago that was, he dated an ER nurse out of Fairfax named Dana.

4:54 How cool slash freaky is that? Anyway, somebody else, a gentleman who lives out west. He collects silver, silver rounds, silver bars, and some additional coins. Now, he has been doing this for an awfully long time. His dad started stacking silver forever ago when he was a little kid. And as he grew up, he just kind of picked up on that hobby.

5:22 And he specifically mentioned that when he gets to the part of the book, I think it was at the Bucky's gas station, the lady inside kept asking Jack if he had any more silver, that sort of thing. He got a kick out of that because Jack's like, no, I'm not getting rid of any more silver. He said he got a kick out of that because that's basically, that's basically him.

5:42 His entire life up to this point, stacking silver wise, has been using it as a savings strategy, which matches up to with what Jack was doing. And I really, really enjoyed that. The silver is in the book for a reason. And it's the same reason that listeners have been stacking it for years. It's not a magic trick, it's value.

6:03 People who believe in a little hard money tucked away for a rainy day, they recognize that. And let's just say he and I and Jack are in good company. So those are the emails where we have parts of the book colliding with real life. So here are some emails from other listeners. We have a listener up in Alaska.

6:25 He and his wife understand prepping in a way that most of us don't. Very extreme conditions, especially in the winter, up there in Alaska. He said that listening to the show has helped them both, and that he's enjoying Lone Men on the Ridge. And here's the really cool part. He says the show is, quote, speaking into my prepping, end quote.

6:51 So basically, parts of the show has been saying some of the things that he has been needing to hear. He is also working on his own passion project. So, dude, keep at it. Thank you so much for the email. Then there's a former over-the-road truck driver who has found himself in New Jersey. He listens to the podcast every day at work to help keep his mind occupied, to the point where he said he might need to start the entire catalog from the beginning to keep himself occupied, maybe and or distracted at work.

7:27 That's probably one of the best compliments that I've ever gotten. And then a listener out of Milton, Florida. This is where the latest hurricane made a direct hit. And he wrote to tell me that overall his preps treated him very well. So him prepping for a hurricane was not just theory. He actually lived through it, came out on the other side just fine, and he took the time to sit down and send me an email.

7:57 So here are three things that he brought up that I want to share. One, he didn't have anything to mark hazards with. Power lines and trees down everywhere. He didn't have any bright tape like surveyor's tape, no brightly colored rope, or nothing reflective that he could flag things that were dangerous.

8:16 He had some flares to set out, but thought better of it because of the potential fire hazard, which makes sense. So here is a very inexpensive thing to add to your hurricane kit, your severe storm kit, whatever you want to call it, a roll of surveyor's tape or some reflective tape. Cost a couple bucks.

8:36 That way you can mark things, both for you, neighbors, first responders, utility companies, whatever. And again, just please be careful messing around power lines, regardless if they're on the ground or not. And number two, he was kind of shocked to see how helpless some people around him really were.

8:56 He figured there might be a few people caught short, but instead, it was a lot more than he had guessed. So without power, 24 hours later, your fridge is no good. So he and his family are now putting together totes, just waters and snacks to set aside for immediate neighbors, because he saw firsthand that some of the people right next door were not prepared or were not prepared as well as they could have been.

9:25 And that's not charity. That's probably one of the smartest preps you can have, because your neighbor is your first line, whether you planned it that way or not. And then the third, and this is the one I want to leave you with, reference his email. He said there were a lot of people that were incredibly helpful to each other, that sense of community.

9:47 Even the ones that maybe didn't have anything. He watched the community pull together when it counted. So all that talk about how unprepared folks were, that's the part that he wanted to let me know. There were some people prepared. There were some people that maybe were not prepared as well as they could have been, but they still reached out to help others.

10:10 And I get a lot of emails, and I'm not able to read every single one of them on the air because a lot of them are personal, I guess you could say. A lot of folks do not want me reading them on the air, which I respect 100%. I do not put names. I may put like Milton, Florida, only because that is very important to the context of the email.

10:32 So for the emails that I just spoke about, folks, thank you so much for writing in. For all the emails that I get, I appreciate everybody taking the time, sitting down and sending me an email. I do answer every single email personally, and I answer them as soon as I'm able to get to them. And a good number of folks have emailed me about the new website.

10:55 They found it, they liked it, I really do appreciate it. So I'm not going to make this whole mailbag episode a sales pitch, but buildyourark.net, check it out, poke around, be prepared solutions, release their new dashboard. There is a ton of information. I have only had about an hour or so to go through it myself, and I have barely scratched the surface on the new dashboard.

11:23 So please keep all the emails coming, whether it's part of Lone Man that has collided with real life, or you just want to vent, or you just want to say how good the podcast is, or you want to tell me how bad it sucks. I read them all and I appreciate all opinions. All right, folks, everybody have a good weekend.

11:42 If I don't talk to you before Monday, practical prep podcast at gmail.com, prep underscore podcast, and I will probably get some articles out over the weekend and have them posted to buildyourark.net in the event I get tied up with yard work and a bunch of other errands, and I don't get a chance to talk about some current events that have been happening here in the last 48 to 72 hours.

12:08 All right, folks, as always, please be careful out there. Take care of one another, and until next time.

12:16Keith You've been listening to the Common Sense Practical Prepper. Subscribe, like, drop a review over and out.