Clay Martin, a retired US Green Beret, and author came on the show to talk about how likely will there be another Civil War, and his book, Prairie Fire: Guidebook for Surviving Civil War 2.
Will there be another Civil War here in the US? That has been the conversation that I've heard from either side of the political party? Looking that what happened in 2020 and last year, all the violence, protest, looting, and civil unrest has made me worry!
So I invited Clay Martin, a retired US Green Beret, and author, on to the show to discuss how likely will there be a Civil War? And why has it been the topic in the past couple of months? Also, if there's one, what would be the reason that caused it?
We also talked about, if there will be one, how should we prepare for it?
On top of that, we also talked about his book, Prairie Fire: Guidebook for Surviving Civil War 2.
My new book Skip The Line is out! Make sure you get a copy wherever you get your new book!
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I write about all my podcasts! Check out the full post and learn what I learned at jamesaltucher.com/podcast.
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James Altucher 0:01
This isn't your average business podcast, and he's not your average host. This is the James Altucher Show. Today on the James Altucher show, is there going to be Civil War Two? I mean, the thought would have been ridiculous to me even a few years ago. But last year, I actually heard smart people on both sides of the aisle. This is not political on both sides. Were saying, Oh, we're gonna succeed if this happens if XYZ happens, and again, I heard this from Democrats. I heard this from Republicans. I heard this from libertarians, but what happens if there's a civil war too? So I brought on Clay Martin and some former Greenbrae he's been there done that he seems civil wars in action. He wrote a book Prairie Fire guidebook for surviving Civil War Two. Here's clay Martin to tell us how to do it.
CLAY You wrote a book about prepping for Civil War Two. It's called Prairie Fire. This comes after your book. Concrete Jungle. I forgot the subtitle that one.
Clay Martin 1:13
Green Berets guide to something surviving civil urban survive urban survival. Yeah, that's right. Yep.
James Altucher 1:19
So you know, I wonder about this. Because, look, I think about Seattle last year, where they had the the chop, or the chairs or whatever they Oh, yeah, the chat. Yeah. Like, you know, I'll do proper introductions for you and everything. But the chairs really bothered me like this completely autonomous zone was taken over by God knows who the mayor said it was like an arts festival. And teenagers were actually dying. Yeah, like, like the children of parents were dying in this and they wouldn't let ambulances in. They wouldn't let the medical people in and nobody got it. And then when they said we're gonna take over the mayor's house, it she puts ran tanks through it, and ended the whole thing. And now the main guy who was running that is like selling T shirts online. Like why wasn't anybody charged for that?
Clay Martin 2:11
Man that that's that's the world that we live in. I mean, that's that's part of like the the slippery slope of like disaster is the fact that that was allowed to happen, basically for political gain. And that was really bad. Ironically enough, there's one happening in California right now that's kind of like the opposite. It's like some super right wing dudes that basically declared this tool town area is like, seceded. And nobody's really doing anything about that when either but the the jasmine, I'm kind of with you, that really bothered me as well. Simply because like you said, it was like a, it was like a New Amsterdam on steroids. Like they got away with whatever they wanted in there. And if people paid for it, that was really weird. And it's also, you know, contrary to to what we would think of both the state and federal government doing in a situation like that it was really bizarre.
James Altucher 3:05
Ever there's obviously we've seen a lot of bizarre things and some of it done with good intention. Some of it I can't understand, like, okay, you know, economic lockdowns, there's a lot of debate about it, if you have a pandemic going, you know, I don't know what the I'm not a doctor, I don't know what the medical is, but you would see, like, furniture stores closed, which never have anybody in them. And downtown, there would be a 20,000 person protest. But I guess somehow COVID wasn't going to be transmitted in those. So those were allowed. So I just everything became I couldn't understand what was the consistency of anything? And maybe that's where you're like, what is Civil War Two? Like, how is that going to happen?
Clay Martin 3:47
That's open to debate, there are a lot of ways that it can go down. And what all those things you were just talking about, that's really, I think, the first time that we've seen protests happen on that scale, and they weren't in play, right, let's call them what they were for, purely for political gain. And basically what I came to the conclusion of play about mid July of 2020, I mean, that was actually a well funded color revolution. All that BLM stuff that started was the beginning phases of a color revolution. That was what he meant by color revolution. color revolution is this term that loosely means we started this in the early 90s. It was kind of like using a non violent, mostly protest movement to overthrow a government. It worked in a lot of ways because you know, in the 90s starting, they wouldn't really let you like machine gun protesters anymore. world opinion would instantly turn against you. So you could get away from that you could go to kind of this pseudo we break things, but we don't really, you know, paying the president for that from a lamppost style. What
James Altucher 4:55
Why is that called a color revolution like is that named after like how Practice revolutions in the military?
Clay Martin 5:02
No, not not at all. It was just that I don't even really know who came up with the term it but it was the it was like the Orange Revolution in Ukraine in 92. In a lot of times, it had to do purely with some color that was picked to represent like, we want to overthrow this, we're wearing orange armbands, or purple or whatever, there's kind of became known as color revolutions. And we were behind a lot of those. It's kind of like what our government does.
James Altucher 5:30
Right? So So you're saying the, you know, BLM? Again, all these things, I feel start with good intentions. But as a lot of people know, even when I was talking to Eric Adams was now the mayor of New York City, I was talking to him right after or during the BLM. And he said there were other forces that intermingled or mixed a big tent and like, like bricks would show up at different parts of the city, right, simultaneously, all of a sudden, and those weren't the protesters, but there were groups mixed in like, and he never, nobody ever explained, like, who those groups were, maybe people didn't know, I don't know. But like, all these things together, like is this like what happens
Clay Martin 6:07
that's actually a hallmark of a color revolution because a lot of times you don't have like if I'm little yo Langley say and or whatever, and I want to go over to Ukraine and have a color revolution. There has to be a legitimate grievance to start with, I can't just go in and mass make up, you'll have the country to to freak out have a protest over nothing. It helps immensely if there was a legitimate grievance or to start with or a felt legitimate grievance. And I really think that's where that where the BLM thing went. I mean, I think a lot of those people, when they started protesting, they they had a legitimate grievance, like, hey, we want to, we want to bring awareness to these things that are happening. And then it was Yeah, exactly. It was rapidly hijacked by to some degree criminals, just people that were just there to loot things and you know, make some new TVs and Nikes. more nefarious, you started to see this like level of command and control. That tells you there was a lot of money behind this. I was actually just speaking in town where I live about this a meeting the other night, if you knew what you were looking for, you could watch from up top and see these little, usually cars with some kind of marking on top of LA Times, there's little white rollers that were driving around the protest, and they were coordinating things. And then you would also see a lot of these elements, that would be like two or three main agitators up front. And they were kind of the guys that were in charge. And this this kind of goes back to human nature to we'd have a mob and we're out there and we don't really know we're milling about and we got signs and we're angry. We're not really focused. It doesn't take a lot to focus that mob and the kind of the mob mentality take over and do your bidding. You could see that in pretty much every protest that happened last summer. And it's very ironic also that it was a BLM protest Black Lives Matter. It was almost always led with the first brick was always thrown the first mall top by a little college aged white guy almost every time.
James Altucher 8:10
Yeah, they were at one point in New York, they arrested like two lawyers or two people working for a law firm. Yes. Who threw a Molotov cocktail in a police car. Right. And this will be the last question as I like that St. Louis guy, like a retired cop was trying to stop people from robbing Porsche TV. Yeah, punch him in a in a mostly black community. And he was shot on video. It's on YouTube to watch Yep, shot and killed you see him bleeding out. And you hear the guy saying I didn't mean to do anything to do it. That guy is clearly identifiable. Like why did they catch that guy?
Clay Martin 8:45
Because they didn't want to you know, that's that's really where this comes down to. That's also why especially in retrospect you can look at this is all a coordinated effort to to kind of try and overthrow the government because all the charges went away because that was such a good lead up to oh, this is scary times now. Oh, now we're going to this election season and you really want this to continue. It's kind of part of what the mobs and violence is about anyway, it's about scaring people, normal people. So you have an undue influence at the at the ballot box. And it's, I mean, all those riots stopped about September and we haven't heard from from them since in any kind of major way except for the trials of Derek Chauvin and the trial of Cal Rittenhouse.
James Altucher 9:33
So okay, so obviously, these are things that put the phrase civil war on, you know, that used to be like a crazy phrase, you can't can't have a civil war. But when people like you know, for instance, Tucker Max, we both know when he was I was having lunch with him shortly after all that and he was saying it could happen. This was before all the doom or optimism stuff that he has out now. Like, what's going on? Like, why has this become like an acceptable phrase and how could This actually happened. I'm scared.
Clay Martin 10:03
Well, man, I am too. Let me go and throw that out there to the people that want a civil war, the least in this country are the people that have fought in a way game war, because we've seen what it looks like. And to think about that happening in our own streets, like, just the scale of destruction and death and things that I like, like I like air conditioning, I like having my trash taken out by the tray, like, those are all great things. But for us that have that have seen it, like we want that to least. Now how could it happen? Man, you're right, three years ago, even saying that was like a nutbar conspiracy theory like instantly, like, like, We're done talking phrase. But now, I mean, if you look around like mainstream media, like, there are a lot of people that have said the words, Civil War, Civil Wars coming national divorce as another way for him to, to phrase it, mainstream guys are saying these kinds of things. I think even Tucker Carlson has uttered the words, you know, national divorce. So it's on everybody's mind. And that should also be an indicator that it's a lot more back in the realm of possibility. Now, how does it actually shake out? It's, that's a tough one is that there are a lot of ways that a country can slide into a civil war. Yeah, I think a lot of people when they initially think the word civil war, they think, you know, 1860, like, you have some guy's blue, I got some guys great, and we're gonna meet on the battlefield and fight it out. That's, that's probably like a lot less likely. In the modern world, we'd probably be closer to something like the Croatian Civil War. Croatia, in 1991. Wall fell communism zoldyck, they want to break away from Yugoslavia. So it starts with like a, actually some riots and stuff. And then it's, it becomes some small scale, like guerrilla fighting, closer to crime really, then, like combat, like shooting artillery at each other yet, but like, they're gonna go over here and burn down this, this Slavic business, and they're gonna come back and burn this Croatian, you know, neighborhood. And that goes back and forth, back and forth for a while. That's probably the most likely case for us. And then it finally escalates. And they eventually break away like a section of territory, like, this is ours now. And we're new nation,
James Altucher 12:32
like a bigger autonomous zone of like what we saw,
Clay Martin 12:36
much, much bigger, it took them about three years. So what's
James Altucher 12:39
the sequence of events that could trigger anything here? And of course, your book is about how to have not how do we fight it, but how do we survive it? And that's what I'm like, I don't want to fight in anything. But I do want to survive if right things go bad.
Clay Martin 12:54
Well, on top of which, you know, it's funny that would be it would even be illegal for me to say, this is how we went. Get right back into like the trees and ag that kind of thing. But survive, it is a big piece. And
James Altucher 13:07
but what's the sequence of events that could like even lead to it right here?
Clay Martin 13:11
Well, there's multiple ways for this to go, the one that I covered in the book obviously didn't happen yet. I saw the the fact that the election will probably be contested coming about July. And I think a lot of other people did, too. Like we knew this was not going to be a normal sequence of events. But I also didn't think that it would be as maybe blatantly screwed up as it was. So one of the ways that it could have gone and still could go after the 22, or the 24 is most likely action of events. Like I said, this is not 1860. I don't think that a state is going to be like, That's it. We're out of the Union. We succeed, like South Carolina did. If for no other reason that's been kind of settled by Lincoln doctrine, like you, you can't leave because we'll send you for bayonets to make sure that you don't leave. But it is very easy for especially a coalition of states, let's say like Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, Missouri and Arkansas, to say after the 24 election, like that was a no way legit. And we do not recognize that government is sitting as the right rightful government of the United States. And now we have a government next aisle over here without a gun. That's a that's a much more likely scenario.
James Altucher 14:31
And then, of course, you know, US government will respond. And by the way, I'm not saying this is a good thing or a bad thing. Just effect. But yeah, it's just a thing that could happen because we speak it was scary around election time. Right, right. And so the US government correspondents say, listen, we're sending in troops, and you're not doing that.
Clay Martin 14:50
Right. And those states are like, No, you're not. And it doesn't take it doesn't take cruise missiles to start a civil war. Yeah, that can really be Much as okay, just like we did do it in segregation, and we're sending the 82nd airborne to your state. And they're gonna take over your state house. And then like you have some protesters and those guys show up and there's pushing match, and then somebody starts pulling the trigger. That's how things escalate. That's how the cycle of violence starts. And it's a it's a, it's easy to start, it's very difficult to stop.
James Altucher 15:21
And so at this time, like what's happening in terms of infrastructure as electricity being cut off as water being cut off as gas being cut off? Very probably, I mean, you talk about like, phase one, phase two, phase three, right, like, it's in the phase two area where things are phase beginning of phase two things start to shut down.
Clay Martin 15:40
Right. And, I mean, that's something that was was talked about not ever executed during Coronavirus, roundabout July. Yet, Trump being in the White House at the time, you know, talked openly about the idea of we might have to shut down interstate travel, we might have to have all the states like, you know, close off their borders, which is, is pretty crazy. But yeah, that's that's an easy way for it to start. That would be actually, you know, a very good US government, federal government response to a state, especially a landlocked state saying, we don't recognize you anymore. Like, okay, we blockade you then. And now nothing goes in and out. So yeah. And depending on what kind of state you have, what's what's made locally, that could be very bad. I mean, even if you think you make a lot of things in your state, that the modern world as we've seen over this process is more interwoven than I think I would have appreciated two years ago.
James Altucher 16:38
Yeah, I mean, I think it's our it was, it was scary to realize how much of our goods how many of our goods were made in China, when all this started, oh, why I didn't realize that everything was essentially made there. Even even food that we grow here is sent there to be packaged and then sent back wrecked, which is absolutely nuts. And our our drugs are like our pharma drugs are all are all made. They're
Clay Martin 17:02
all those terrify, as well as, you know, precursor chemicals for our refineries, we always think of ourselves as making a lot of fuel in the area where I'm at? Well, that's great. We do have a lot of refiners, we can make a lot of gas, but only in some cases if we can get the magical chemicals from China. So yeah, that's it's, it's, it's really wild, how much that's true.
James Altucher 17:25
So okay, so let's say, I'm in my house, and suddenly, I'm a little nervous, oh, the electricity is gonna shut off, or the water is gonna shut off. Like, how do you start preparing for these things? And I feel like you can't really prepare for things in a worst case scenario, but but maybe I'm wrong.
Clay Martin 17:43
No, I mean, you make a very good point there. To me, that's kind of like, that's kind of tactical level prepping. That's like, Okay, what do I need to you know, fill up my bathtub and have some beans in a bucket, and that kind of thing. And that will get you through like the initial couple of days or a couple of weeks. The biggest thing that I want people to take from both books actually, is that you can't do it by yourself, like Jimmy or clay or whatever, is not going to be fine in my house with like my stuff that I use my Visa card to acquire. And I use myself as an example for that a lot of times like, I was a 15 years special operations guy. I have done all kinds of like commando Steve ninja stuff. And I can't do this by myself. Like there's not a chance like I gotta sleep sometimes I can't even handle security alone at my house for an extended period of time, because I'm gonna take a nap. Like this is how it is. The honestly the best way is you've got to get a group of people together that have hopefully a wide variety of skill sets. And and start thinking this through and as much as you can you solve your logistical problems like okay, I got a water filter, and I got a water source over there. If I live in a wet area, it's not a big problem. If I live in like Arizona, what's the first problem like? That's number one, I gotta have like 10,000 gallons stored somewhere or a well that's capable of producing something. But yeah, it's a lot more about the long term survival than it is the short term survival I think
James Altucher 19:17
so. So okay, uh, well seems like are a well or connection to someone with a well seems or some water source seems important. What about electricity, gas, stuff like that? I guess a generator, your own generator.
Clay Martin 19:32
What are you gonna feed it with? Yeah, basically, this is the whole this should be the horrifying thing. When it comes right down to it. electricity and fuel are the rarest commodities that there are. Now, I will also say that having seen this in the the Balkans in the Middle East Iraq, especially right after the invasion when we took like all their power offline and their ability just A couple of years later to bring power back. It's it's kind of a mixed bag. Think about electricity. How where's your power base, that depends where you live. Like for us in the region that I live in, we have a very robust grid, and there's a power plant five, six miles away from me that makes power for our area, we still have a lot of very small power plants. For people in some parts of the country that have a major power plant that's, you know, three 400 miles away, or California that never tried to bring electricity in from Texas during the whole like Enron debacle. There's not gonna be any power, there's none. And you can circumvent that to a degree by having, you know, super robust solar and a battery bank. But it's a really big dice roll. If for no other reason, also, then you've invested this huge amount of money in something that you can't take with you and can easily be taken from you. The fuels bit like, once again, using the Iraq example, people think that Iraq had a lot of fuel. Well, they did, they had a lot of raw crude oil, they did not have a lot of refining capacity. So man, I want to say gas was up to like, we're talking like 2006 2007, when we're paying like $1 a gallon, $2 a gallon. They were paying like five and $10 per gallon, all on a black market, awesome dude on the side of the road that I don't know, stole some fuel off of fuel convoys, or got some of the one that dribbled out of that refinery. And I mean, they're lucky to get five gallons. So So fuel is a, it's a massively bad issue, and go to this whole rabbit hole to have like, Okay, if I lived here in a farmer's I can make biodiesel and but it's, uh, it's just basically when you had to plan on there not being I think
James Altucher 21:53
so I guess, I guess I know, I know, one guy was who does solar power and during the summer months and spring months, he has 100% of his power taken care of by himself. And then in the winter months, he's got about 50%. And I asked him if he had to store his power, he said he could store just a couple days worth only
Clay Martin 22:11
the ability to store power is like prohibitively expensive, you start talking about, you know, fuel, or where they call them, wet cell batteries, and all this other crazy stuff to actually store power for any length of time. I mean, there's things that are like $1,000 per battery, and that will last that long, it's not that many watts. So, I mean, it becomes a huge issue for us as as modern people, and you think about simple things like refrigeration, like, you know, how many people's you know, preparation plan, like, okay, everything's gonna fall apart. Well, I've got too deep freezers told me Well, if power goes out, like that's, that's done unless it's wintertime. It's gonna be spring eventually. Yeah, so I mean, it's a dark subject.
James Altucher 22:52
So when people say, Oh, I have my own generator, what does that mean? Where did the where like you said, where are they getting the power from?
Clay Martin 22:58
Right? I mean, I've actually got a generator, that's a very common thing in our area. It I mean, just house I just bought actually has one attached to the house, it runs off natural gas, it's great. It instantly kicks off the power goes out. But once again, you know, that's not a real prep plan. That's like a nice to have thing if a storm hits and we lose power for three or four days. That is not a long term solution to anything. with anybody else if it's not one of those it's a little generator that you fill up with a Gaskin like that's that's not a realistic plan to to have electricity
James Altucher 23:31
so what would you do if like power was out for an extended period of time?
Clay Martin 23:37
It is it is going to suck that's that's just that's all there is to it. I mean, there is what they
James Altucher 23:46
do in Iraq like what are the people do for years
Clay Martin 23:50
looked at the wall like burned you know, burned burned out either propane from around you'll canister or or animal dung to make their their food. I didn't have lights. I mean, you could live without electricity. It's not it's not fun. It's not a great time. I mean, especially the area I live in is brutally hot in the summer. I mean, miserable. Just gonna have to take it. I mean, there is That's it.
James Altucher 24:17
And then what about in terms of like food? Like, like, how much did you prepare to have food in advance? Like even canned food? Maybe not frozen food because like you say the power could go out but even canned food, like what would a responsible person have in storage?
Clay Martin 24:35
I really like to have a year and two was better. But neither of those is actually like 100% True. I care if we cover this deeply in the in the in the book or not. But a lot of other people are not preparing. So you know, to think that I'm going to have my two years of food and I'm going to sit in my house in the middle to town and cook beans and rice, while reels of starving to death is incredibly unrealistic. Like, that's not going to let
James Altucher 25:09
you make a really interesting point in the book that you should buy. If you do, like do a lot of buying a food to store up, you should do it out of town. So people don't know. Oh, yeah, yeah, you have all the food, but at the same time, you should also buy local, so everybody's your friend.
Clay Martin 25:24
It's a catch 22. And that's like a lot of things in the prepping arena like, Yeah, I think you just have all the foods you can lay hands to right now. The bigger deal is to have a group of people and have them also thinking about buying the food is I guarantee you some of that is going to get siphoned off. Yeah, maybe bribes. It may be a method of keeping some people that you don't even really liked that much. But keeping them kind of like on your sides didn't burn your house down in the middle of the night. I mean, food is an issue that I think Americans really can't appreciate, like how desperate people will get for food. Like you think one of the soccer moms that has the coexist bumper stickers nicely in the world, like when our students are starving to death like she will cave your skull with an axe for a camp SpaghettiOs. Like, without question. I mean, horrible, horrible things happen and famines. We've seen this all over the world and all throughout history. It's happened in China, it happened in Ukraine, it happened in Russia during during were there starvation, I believe was China where they would trade babies, so they didn't have to eat their own. When it came to cannibalism. Like, gosh, yeah, it's bad.
James Altucher 26:36
It's what's the worst thing you've personally seen? Like you were in the Greenbrae for and you've been involved in a lot of different actions like what's, what's the worst thing you've seen?
Clay Martin 26:44
Oh, man hit a torture cell house. That was one of the things that various terrorist organizations really specialized in was that Katherine, somebody drove her knees out with Black and Decker and all kinds of other like, terrible, terrible shit. And even showing up the aftermath of one of those is his stomach turning.
James Altucher 27:06
And like, I, you know, obviously, everybody's seen torture in the movies. Yeah. What's, what's the difference between real life and the movies in that
Clay Martin 27:16
it's not going to stop and the good guys are not going to show up to rescue you. And you're going to die a horrible, horrible death. And, yeah, I mean, it's almost unthinkable. I mean, it's to the point that like, I mean, we we had standing agreements amongst each other, like, I will shoot you in the head, if we're going to be captured you my friend. And I would expect you to do the same for me as Yeah, that's just there's no way to go out.
James Altucher 27:43
Yeah, I forgot. I remember reading a couple of weeks ago how Qaddafi was killed, getting all the details, but it couldn't have been worth it. His entire life. Just added up to that at the end.
Clay Martin 27:55
Yeah, he should have he should have pulled a grenade out and done himself. I mean, I'm sure he would have it at any point in that in that event. Yeah, it's, it's bad. That's also a reason that that a civil war is so scary. Civil wars, almost, without exception, feature more of that style of brutality than a regular war does. For what reasons that? I don't know. I mean, to some degree, people feel more like they're fighting traders than than enemies. And it's a lot easier to do terrible shit to a trader, someone that should be on your side, but has not. It's more personal typically. Also, because both sides, you know, families are involved and they become targets. Yeah, it's just, it just is.
James Altucher 28:57
I would say the number one thing you seem to be suggesting is find your crew find your people, whether it's neighbors or people in your area, yes, who you have who have your back and you have their back. And you're kind of like you people would rather pick on an individual than a group over time what seemed like organized people but what other types of preparation should one do or should or how should I be thinking which we not just me but like anybody get and by the way, let's say the odds of this are like close to zero, they're still greater than they were I feel 10 years ago. Me
Clay Martin 29:31
too. Me too. Well, and that goes back to your points is like don't like cash out your 401k yet and buy, you know, generators and night vision goggles. Now, that's, that's good advice right now on January the 2022. Is that good advice in May of 2022. I don't know. There may come a time where you want to spend everything you've got on on preparation work, but Also don't think about buying your way out of trouble. Think about being mentally prepared, physically prepared. Fitness is a huge deal for both, you know, surviving injury, and your ability to to take, you know, mental kind of punishment makes you harder to kill in general in a fight. And it also makes it so you can, you can stay up longer, you can take more more punishment overall. And I guess probably the biggest thing about fitness is it also builds mental toughness every time you go to the weight room when you didn't want to run a mile when you didn't want to. You're building mental toughness, and that's going to be the biggest thing that we're going to need. If this does go hot. As far as the other piece of your questions like, what should you be doing? Again, I cannot overemphasize enough that having a tight group of diverse friends that have different skill sets, also building those relationships. Now, while there's not really a problem, it's any relationship that you build, after things start falling apart is suspect. I, you know, if, if, if I show up, we've never met before, and I'm like, Hey, I broke down in your town or in the middle, this crisis, I noticed you're eating? Well, I'm an ex, Ranger Commando, and I want to protect your house. If you give me some of your food. Can you really trust that relationship? No, it's built on necessity. And it may be built on lies, like you don't know.
James Altucher 31:28
So I mean, it seems like there's nothing really to do. I mean, most people are not like, I appreciate the part about you know, find your group. But most people are not going to build kind of like a community of friends who will protect each other. You know, they're already in their communities already in the neighborhoods.
Clay Martin 31:47
Well, that's fine. I mean, do you have friends where you live?
James Altucher 31:51
Yeah. I mean, I just moved here. So I'm just getting to know what you
Clay Martin 31:55
got. You got to work out at that. And that, that is one of the things though, like, having friends and I don't care what they do for a living, like, I don't care if they're all you know, some kind of weirds okay, if at all passwords, still having that group of friends that you've met in real, what we call meatspace. At least you have a real relationship with them. And at least they're close enough also to influence things when things do go bad. You know, the power goes out like nationwide today, right? EMP strike or whatever, you don't have any more friends that are 2030 miles away from you, like those people don't exist in many ways. Unless you built some elaborate plan to take your family and walk out there with your backpack. They don't exist. Now, the you know, vegan tattoo artists that didn't want to have a gun, she does exist and you know her, there's still value in that relationship. Alright. There's those are still people that you can rely on those people also that even if things go on, you can train to be more and more reliable. So no matter what having like people people is important.
James Altucher 32:59
And then what skills do you think like for instance, I always ask this, like, if, and this is related, like if you were transported to 1000 a day. Like, you know, King Arthur's court or whatever. What, what could you do to convince them to let you live? I don't I feel I could do no, I can't even plug in this microphone before a podcast like what am I going to do? I have no skills I have no real world skills.
Clay Martin 33:25
I immediately not die of dysentery. You know
James Altucher 33:29
like you could be a combat guy like they always need more Knights of the Round Table and stuff like you could
Clay Martin 33:34
how good am I against those guys since I've spent most of my life working with a firearm and they fit most of their life working with their hands or a sword? Like I'm not sword fighting those guys like that is not happening. So yeah, I mean that's that's a very good question. I You got it. I don't know you just got to use your you have to use the time you have now to build some of those skills if you didn't have any I those guys I would probably like grease myself up in some mud and you know jump one of them from this in a way that they wouldn't see it coming because they were big on ambushes and that it kind of worked my way in for somebody else. You do have time right now and I don't know how much time you have might be two weeks might be three years. But you've got to at least start working on the basics of like, additive in yourself that should be way high up the list. How to you know cook, how to prepare food or excuse me store food how to you know cook that on you know, twigs I can gather up in the park. One of the big things I'm going to say for anybody that lives in like a major metro areas, you should be thinking about leaving is that those are those are the worst places to be when supplies are cut off or the fighting starts.
James Altucher 34:49
Yeah, or at least not necessarily leaving beforehand but having an exit plan like I was I was I lived right next to the World Trade the ground zero the World Trade Center on 911 When You know, there was a debate like what if we really needed to leave it there was no way to leave like that he because Manhattan's an island. Right? So that was something that was, you know, a conversation then. But But yeah, because that could you know, cities that are in war could be, you know, breeding grounds of disease, dysentery, all that kind of stuff,
Clay Martin 35:20
right? And they're gonna run out, they're gonna run as supplies first. I mean, I think that an average city La got like a big city usually kept supplied for like three days at a time count, like all their warehousing all the stuff in the grocery stores, the humongous ones, like New York City, I would think it's less than that. I would think it may be even like a 24 to 48 hour cycle. As well as I mean, New York is actually I will say, like, arguably the worst place to be in the entire world when like things go badly. I just, I mean, for that reason, it's so big. Alright, the chain is or the supply chain to keep it alive or so small as possible, you know, that the other like New York isms, you know, living in smaller houses, and you're shopping everyday goods that still think New Yorkers? Do they shop for dinner stuff, like every day at the bodega, or whatever,
James Altucher 36:08
you know, or they were I mean, I do this, I do this. No, and I don't live in New York right now I order from Uber Eats every night.
Clay Martin 36:16
Right? Okay. Well, you know, either way, that's not going to work anymore. Obviously, in the people that typically shopped in more European style, like, Okay, I'm going to stop at the bodega on the way home get stuff for dinner. Like, that's not going to work anymore. So that that makes it in many ways, like, the worst place in the world to be.
James Altucher 36:36
So what's the fastest way to learn is that these are I know, these are like dumb questions, but like, what's the what's the fastest way to learn how to defend myself? Because even if you take like, I don't know, martial arts of global martial arts, right? You're just learning what the, you know, you're not really learning a real world situation,
Clay Martin 36:54
right? I've, I've actually thought about this quite a lot. Because this was a question that came to me a lot right after the pandemic started. It's almost like a lot of people that had never once considered their own safety, were very much considering their own safety. That was also one of the ways you knew things were really we had a lot of people that that hated Gonzalez had showed up at the gun store. Like, I'll take that one like,
James Altucher 37:18
my business partners. His whole family owns pawn shops. And he said gun sales were just through the roof.
Clay Martin 37:24
Oh, right. Crazy. Absolutely crazy. So I would say start with something, a tool that you can use right now. That's super cheap. go to Home Depot and buy avant roofing hammer, basically the hammer on one side and a hatchet on the other. All right, that's probably the easiest weapon in the entire universe to use. Because you instinctively you know how to hit a nail, or you know how to swing a drumstick. It's the same thing. I couldn't be argued that a hatchet is not the best defensive weapon because I can get inside of it with a nail. So they're like high speed niche. Yeah, okay. Yeah, probably, but it's good enough. So go get your hatchet. It's also not so big that you're going to you know, hang in the doorway as you're trying to swing it at somebody. As well as like psychologically. It's still kind of counts as impact weapon it from a psychological perspective for somebody that's never done violence before. An impact weapon is always easier to use than an edge weapon was an edge weapon as weapon being like a knife or a sword, something like that now had to still technically an edged weapon, but I'm thinking that there's a workaround in your brain. Remember that scene in? What is it? Gladiator Russell Crowe? Where they take them out? They're gonna kill them. They asked for clean death. Yeah, I
James Altucher 38:42
don't remember.
Clay Martin 38:43
Okay, well, it's a minor scene, I swear they're gonna execute him. And he says, give me a clean death. Well, in Roman words, what that means it stabbed me. Don't slice me. Because that was one of the biggest things that the Roman army did better than everybody else is they psychologically got their guys to divert deliver penetrating wounds, instead of slashing words. Why is that important? Because logic kills somebody by hitting a major organ with a penetrating wound than it is, however horrific, it might be a slashing wound, even with a sword, even with something humongous like that. Now, why do they have to work so hard? From the psychological angle to to get there guys be willing to do that? And Why could they do it better than anybody else? Well, there's actually like, all this, like, weird hang up stuff. And I would kind of hard to believe, David Grossman, when he says that most people won't deliver a penetrating wound with like a knife. Because psychologically, it's like, it's almost like mixing like sex and violence in a way that like your human brain doesn't really like to do. And a man thinks makes logical sense out. Do you overcome that with I don't know six months of knife work? Yeah, you don't have so it was a knife work. So let's stick to the impact thing. So that's where you can get the hatch. It's it's a lot closer to like an impact weapon, even though it's sharp. Other than that, I mean, you're you are going to have to do something to to train yourself. And I would recommend like MMA, go to a boxing gym. I mean, boxers are fantastic fighters now are their weaknesses that a boxer brings to a street fight? Sure, like, they don't ever throw kicks each other or do take a minute, still having two months of boxing experience, it's something that it helps you immediately and probably translates well enough. I mean, one nice thing about either boxing or MMA or kickboxing, you do get better like moment, number one, like you're gonna go, and they're gonna show you the right way to throw a punch. And you might even throw a couple at somebody else. You're not like a million times better, but you're like, you're that much better. And every time you keep going to class, you keep getting better. So I mean, learning how to fight is a huge deal, even if it's just a little bit even want to fight just a little bit.
James Altucher 41:00
And then what I always wonder is how do you think, why do you think things got so polarized so quickly? Like, even if you go back 10 years or nine years 2020 2012 elections, Obama versus Romney, I feel like, you could have felt strongly about one side or the other. But you could still have discussions about it. Like, you could still talk to people who supported the other side. And you would say, Okay, I see what you're saying, but I'm gonna go with this guy. He seems like X, Y and Z.
Clay Martin 41:29
Oh, I agree. Absolutely. In fact, that's for a piece about this on my blog. I mean, even if you didn't like Obama, like he could give a speech, man, it was hard to watch when Obama's speeches no matter how much you disliked him, and not like a little bit, because like, he was a really talented at giving speeches, he was great at it. And he kind of had that way, like mesmerizing, a crowd that you see amongst really good politicians. How did it get so polarized? Without like, really putting my tinfoil hat on, but kind of put my tinfoil hat on? It really does feel like there was this kind of like, global globalist conspiracy to like push things in a certain direction. And, I mean, that's really the only way I can explain it, there's to be there's no way the thing should have gotten so polarized in such a short period of time. I mean, to me, it's even weird that like communism is like the thing that we're we're fighting against right now. Like, I thought communism was dead, like 1988. I haven't thought about communism again, since like, they stopped making action movies about communism in like, 1991. I had no idea that it was like, a recovering ideology, and was so like, widely, you know, loved and it's crazy to me.
James Altucher 42:50
Yeah, I mean, you even look at just history. It's never worked in any country. And there's a reason there's an economic reason for it is that the price, if you give up profits in a company, the price you pay for that is inefficiency. So when when a competitor comes in, who's more efficient than you, and so they able to squeeze out more with less, they, you have to get more efficient in order to generate profits. So you'll go out of business. So if you have all these competing companies getting more and more efficient, versus countries where there's no profits, so they become they never have to fight for efficiency. That's why you see Soviet cars compared with us cars, or Japanese cars, there was a huge difference in the 80s
Clay Martin 43:33
you can actually look back even further in time to there was one one colony of like Quakers or whatever in the early 1700s that decided when they found their little colony, whatever they're like, Hey, man, here's we're gonna do everything we get put communal storehouse, everything's gonna be groovy. They were like the first hippies ever. Like he was a little weird buckles and stuff. And their first year they almost starved to death. Because with no incentive of like, this is my stuff. And if I have access, even I could sell it and I got to make a better life, my family's kind of thing. Nobody wanted to work. That's, that's communism in a nutshell. Like if nobody wants to work. If there's no incentive to work harder, who's going to?
James Altucher 44:22
Yeah, I mean, do you think that's why there's so many people are not at work right now? Like, yeah, you go to a restaurant it half at half staff?
Clay Martin 44:30
Oh, I mean, absolutely. I mean, we're seeing it big time here. Every every business like the next three counties has, you know, hiring signs, like please, like, we need help. And a lot of those at a, you know, significantly above minimum wage for the kind of job that it is. And they cannot find people and I mean, it does make a lot of sense. I mean, if you're getting 600 bucks a week and unemployment, or you can go work at the truck, stop down the street for 400 a week. Which one are you going to do
James Altucher 45:00
Yeah. And and more of you just sit at home and do nothing.
Clay Martin 45:04
Well, that's what I mean. That's where the that's where the 600 a week comes from. That's what the unemployment benefit was for a while. Whereas a was a workout to it. Yeah, I think a $10 an hour worker makes $400 a week for taxes.
James Altucher 45:18
I mean, I was I was very confused about all this during the economic lockdowns, which the government was enforcing, you sort of had to pay people to not work because people wanted to go to work. Right. But if you pay too much, I mean, I even had this discussions with you know, the Larry Kudlow, who was the nation's economic adviser, like you, there's a fine line between supporting the people you're asking to shut down. And then even though they don't want to, and then bog it and giving too much so that people just totally back off from work. Right.
Clay Martin 45:50
And, you know, it would also, I think, for a lot of these people that had those kind of low paying jobs. I mean, really, if you took a year off, like you had some job that that sucked, but that was what you had, and it was just barely making it. And you got to take a year off. And like, do whatever you want, and really, like it would be really hard to go back to that kind of kind of bullshit job. And yeah, it'd be, it'd be rough.
James Altucher 46:15
So these are some of the things I think that are probably contributing to the ideas that maybe there could be problems down the road, like, what do you think? Well, like, You're neck deep in this stuff? Like, what do you think are the odds of a so called Civil War to or some problem that, you know, is scary? Given the bank also that most Americans are pretty lazy and don't want anything bad to happen? That's
Clay Martin 46:39
actually my that's actually what what tempers my my belief that there will be what, because most people are too lazy to get involved. I mean, that is just the bottom line. i There's, there's a huge percentage of people that like, kind of like, watch this on Pay Per View, like nah, okay, I'm not, I'm not going I'm not participating. And that's, that's actually kind of sad in a way too, because there's also I mean, a pretty significant percentage of people that would just let like the government, like stand on their neck with a jackboot, rather than do something. So I'm gonna call it like, 7030. With the 30, being the Civil War part, I'd say 70 against 30% for which is still high odds. I mean, those are really, really high odds higher than I would like them to be. Because like three years ago, four years ago, let's say five years ago, scape before the Donald Trump era, those odds were like, 95 not gonna happen, and like five gonna happen, right? And if it was the five, it had to be, like, influenced by somebody outside to like, there had to be some kind of like, crazy event to make it happen. So yeah, I mean, I don't think it's great odds, but I think it actually goes up every day. And we can see some some crazy things too. Like, I think there's a huge number of people right now, that are not going bananas, because they still think we can fix this through an electoral process. And if the 2022 election has the same kind of shenanigans that the 2020 election had, I think that changes the odds significantly. I think you could see some fireworks after that.
James Altucher 48:18
So, you know, it's, it's interesting, again, like I feel, I feel like this is almost like a prequel to the matrix. Like the matrix movies never had a prequel. And I could just imagine, though, that it being like this, where, okay, everybody's told to stay at home. And then suddenly, the biggest companies don't want to say, hey, instead of saying, Whoa, why don't you come into this Metaverse that we're building like this virtual reality thing? It's gonna be a lot of fun for everybody. And it just seems like this is how a prequel I would write a prequel to the matrix is like this,
Clay Martin 48:48
right? So you go into the metaverse, you actually pass on your couch. And then here comes the Facebook moving truck. It pulls up for your house comes down and puts you in a cocoon carries you out. Yeah, but yeah, in the matrix. Yeah.
James Altucher 48:59
Yeah. Where you live, it's a better life. Anyway. Metaverse that was
Clay Martin 49:02
that was in the fine for the contract. You didn't read? Yeah, there you go. Yeah, man. I mean, that's, that's possible. That your good point? Yeah, the other thing is, you got to look at what's happening in Australia and Europe, like that way crazier than we are right now. And you got to wonder are those same kind of lock downs and, and vaccine mandates and stuff coming here? And, you know, will our people really put up with that is that as much as Americans are lazy and soft? Like they also have like a strong history of rebellion. Like their thing. I mean, that's, that's built into our DNA. And they are also you know, armed to the teeth. So, yeah, those are both wildcards.
James Altucher 49:47
Now, yeah. You mentioned in the book, you've done some private security work, like you had, you know, clients in, you know, Montana or wherever they were there. You mentioned some rich clients that had to kind of appease the neighbors so was Not to get them all upset. But what's Do people really need private security? Like who who actually needs private security, I can't imagine I other than like a celebrity who doesn't want to be harassed in the middle of the street in LA, like there's someone need private security in their home all the time, I'll tell you something
Clay Martin 50:17
that I never told them. Because they're tired of my paycheck, that's just how it is. In a real like, like, like, like, no shit, like, things have gone terribly bad. Your private security is either gonna leave to protect their own family, or cut your head off in your sleep, and then take over your compound for their family. That's just kind of just kind of the way that these things go. Like I always do is like, you know, celebrities or you know, Bill Gates or anybody else that has like a massive amount of money, and therefore needs private security. Now, in a, in a real light crisis event. This, that's not gonna work, the only people are gonna be able to have private armies at that point are like, you know, warlords, like odds are the person that will be, you know, sitting at Bill Gates, his compound, if that actually goes down, is whoever the toughest guy was, that was on his security detail, like, like his equivalent to like a colonel right now, we'll be sitting in the big chair with the the downflow of security goons.
James Altucher 51:17
Right? Like, if I, if I was, if I was someone like Bill Gates, or Jeff Bezos, I would be thinking, okay, my, my plan B or Plan Z, whatever you want to call it would be to change my parents figure out how to what is going to be valuable in terms of trading, and stock up on that in various locations around the country or the world and Dow and get paperwork for another identity? Well, like that would be my, my plan z,
Clay Martin 51:44
I would have a bunch of like dudes that are like, gangsters around, but I would do more than just pay them to I would hang out with them, I would build like a personal relationship. So that they didn't want to cut my head off when, when push came to shove. And, you know, I would also build a plan where I brought them in, like, here's what we're gonna do, we are going to have a bunch of stuff to trade and protect us is that that's how, that's how you keep yourself alive in a situation like that. Like Greenbrae 101. Like, okay, well, if there's going to be an insurgency, we'll, I'm going to have the biggest uncertainty.
James Altucher 52:25
Yeah, so interesting. Well, you know, Clay, Clay Martin, author of prairie fire guide book for surviving Civil War Two, and concrete jungle, a Green Berets guide to urban survival. This is all so interesting, because simply because of the fact that we are having this conversation. It's like an interesting
Clay Martin 52:46
way. It's not like you said, three, four years ago, this would be like some, some lunatic like, like, I don't know why this is so crazy. And now I mean, it's mainstream, like, you know, people are talking about this over their dinner tables is that it looks more and more like it's happening. I mean, they put a blast balls around the White House right now. Have you seen that? No. Yeah, starting last night. They've been bringing in those those pre made concrete very, the big ones. I mean, the big bastards like the stop rockets that we had overseas, and other build a blast wall around the White House right now. Which is, I mean, it's disconcerting. Like, that's
James Altucher 53:20
yeah. Why do you think they're doing that? Why is it starting now?
Clay Martin 53:23
I mean, I have absolutely no idea. No, yeah. The popular sentiment on like, Twitter today is the only reason they're doing this is they're planning on doing something that you're really not going to like, which which makes sense. But I mean, I don't know. I mean, for all I know, they know, there's a protest scheduled for Washington DC or some kind of riot or something. But it is definitely something that's kind of without precedent, some that I've never seen before, and it's concerning.
James Altucher 53:48
Well, well, look, if I show up at your place, in the middle of the night, like, Hey, I got your Hey, clay, I could fix your computer. And I don't even know if I could do that. To be honest. I could write a blog post.
Clay Martin 54:02
Can you bring Jay the engineer to fix my computer? In that case we are cool right?
James Altucher 54:06
Jay is with me. He's not gonna cut off my head. I don't think.
Clay Martin 54:11
Well, no, really. I mean, I think we have time, you'll figure out something that you can do in an environment where there's no electricity, and work on that. I mean, it could be simple. I mean, you're an entertaining dude. I told my friend Jesse Kelly this all the time, like he's gonna survive the jihad, because we're gonna have somebody around to keep us entertained. Like, that's cool. Yeah, he's funny. He's a funny guy like, Well, hey, man, you find it brother. Yeah, but I mean, everybody should be working on their skills right now. Like, this is the training time. This this is the montage and the title fights coming up maybe so be ready for it. Well, thank
James Altucher 54:45
you very much clay and come on again. And I'm going to try to get ready and we'll see if I'm, if I'm loving