L.O.G. 111 What doesnt kill me only makes me dumber.

Hello and welcome to the video version of The Human Behavior Podcast. I'm Brian Marren, the host and creator of the show. As always, I will be joined by human behavior expert Mr. Greg Williams, who the show is affectionately named after. On the show, we discuss different topics through the lenses of what we call Human Behavior Pattern Recognition Analysis. If you'd like to find out more about what that is, please check the links in the episode details and go to our website to learn more. Please don't forget to follow us on social media; the links are also in the episode details. And hit the like and subscribe button to help support our work. Thanks for tuning in, and we hope you enjoy the show.

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So, good morning, Greg. Today we are going to be discussing a few things, generally around the terms of what we would call a lack of critical thinking ability. But the title of it is "That Which Does Not Kill Me Only Makes Me Dumber."

Well, it can. Or, as my therapist says, "What does not kill you only makes you weird at intimacy." So that's a different topic for a different day.

But we hear all these stories like this all the time. And one example is just recently, you've got someone pulling a kid on a sled in the snow with their truck, having fun, and then the next thing you know, someone dies or gets seriously injured going too fast. You've got these horrible, horrible gender reveal parties that people are doing for their children or their unborn children. These baby showers where they reveal whether it's a boy or a girl. And recently, one—the guy had a cannon, and the cannon exploded and hurt a bunch of people. We hear constantly these stories all the time. And we all laugh and we point, we go, "Ha ha ha, what a jackass!"

Yet, we have how many countless personal examples, Greg, of that same exact type of behavior in certain situations? And we don't ever kind of see it when it's actually occurring because in those moments, like we said, what doesn't kill me can only make me dumber. Meaning, "Oh, it didn't hurt me before, maybe I'll try this next thing again." And then the behavior escalates from there. So that's kind of the general topic of the day, Greg, unless you want to start with anything as well.

It's Fat Tuesday, so it's paczki day. So if any of our viewers are out there and you're near a place that has paczkis, please grab as many as you can and send us some, because I'm going to send... there is no such thing as a paczki in Gunnison.

Brian, I think one of the scientific things that you're talking about is that gravity is a... and gravity works perfectly, so does physics. And sometimes what we do is we think that either we have a great original idea, or there's a term called "one-upsmanship." And the one-upsmanship is where, if you can do that, let me show you what I can do. And the problem is that with society advancing in so many different ways, including social media, we tend to want to walk on that sharp edge all the time to get noticed.

And so you talked about, the very first one, sadly, a kid dies getting towed behind a motor vehicle. Number one rule from lessons learned back in the days of sketching, never, ever attach thine self to a moving vehicle, whether by means of sled, broke heels, anything else, because the vehicle generates a tremendous amount of forward momentum. And then that, with the torque of any kind of turns or the wheels spinning, it's going to be a recipe for danger.

And Brian, the problem is, the reason this is a good topic is the problem is, scientifically, you're going to get away with it a number of times, no or minor injuries. So what does that do to our brain? That goes into my limbic system, that goes into my amygdala, that goes into my cortical, and says, "Hey, listen, if we didn't get hurt last time, we weren't trying hard enough. We need to ramp it up. We need to go faster. We need to shorten the rope." Do you get what I'm saying?

No, no. And it goes back to almost basic kind of developmental psychology, how humans learn, right? First I learn my boundaries, then I test my boundaries, and I push my boundaries. That's no different than me waiting till my mom yells my full name before I actually come running. It's almost a similar effect, right? In terms of, okay, well, I've done it this before. What else can I get away with?

And there's a lot that goes into it. I mean, age is a big one, life experience, all that stuff to go before you start going, "Oh, wait a minute here, this could spiral out of control pretty quickly," if you don't have those file folders or experiences. But it is so easy, and it happens in all of our lives, right? In everyday life, I mean, I look at the just horrible, horrible traffic accident recently down in Dallas, or outside of Fort Worth, I think, on the interstate, where it was hundreds of vehicles. I think eight people ended up being killed. And it was the icy road conditions, and it's the same thing, right? "I've, well, I've driven in the snow before, I've driven in ice before. I can still handle this." And then you had just a massive, massive pile-up. It was actually a number of errors along the way in judgment and a whole bunch of other things. But how easily it can happen to us.

Like, we all laugh at the exploding cannon at the gender reveal party, but yet we still do that when we drive our vehicles, meaning that same process. So I think that's where that time and distance comes in, and so why we're titling it "What Doesn't Kill Me Only Makes Me Dumber" is that it can, once I have that experience and I'm fine... We've all had that adrenaline dump in some situation where it was a vehicle thing, and you hit the brakes and you swerved to avoid or did whatever, and you got out of it, or you went into a turn way too fast, but then you ended up making it out of that turn just fine. Okay, you have that rush, that adrenaline, you have the cortisol, you have the dopamine, you get that. And then you go, "Oh, man, that was close, that was scary, I don't ever want to do that again." But what your brain kind of does is go, "Well, that's now our baseline, that's what we're now comparing it off of. It wasn't what you did before, that's our new comparison for future events." Does that kind of make sense?

Well, scientifically, it's exactly correct, because what happens is, you'll say, "That was a close one, let's do it again." And that's borne out because if you take a look at all the people that'll go to an amusement park, for example, and they're constantly saying, "This is the highest or fastest roller coaster, it has the most loops." And there are lines all day long, and people getting back in line, and people getting sick on the ride and turning around and getting on the ride again. The idea is challenging our limits makes us feel alive, it makes us feel as though we accomplished something.

Now, I want you to think of that for a moment and take a look at the math that goes into designing a roller coaster, and think of how many NASA retired techs that are working on the team, and engineers, and how many times that they tested it at different speeds and at different weather conditions. Okay, Dad didn't think of those when he hooked on the rope for the sled, and the kids certainly didn't say, "Dad, should we be doing this?" Because they did it the week before. And right now, Dad's listening to the podcast and going, "Hey, you bastard, my son's dead." Yeah, I get it. But that's what critical thinking is about, Brian.

Let's take that cannon, for example. Of all the injuries that are happening in and around your garage and around your house, number one, I haven't checked this, folks, so fact-check it on your own: number one has got to be fuel or gasoline-related, because people use gasoline for many things. They use gasoline to clean off paint, or to wash their brushes, or to get a stain off the driveway, or they overspill when they're reloading their push lawnmower, and those things are dangerous, Brian. We don't think about that. And then all of a sudden, the one spark, or we're smoking, or we hit something and friction creates a rock creating a spark, and then the next thing you know, we're on fire, or the fumes get too heavy and we can't breathe, or the fumes go across to our water tank. Those accidents happen every day.

And the idea is that you've got to take a look at something like a safety warning label. If something took the time to put a safety warning on it, you should take the time to read it. And I know people are going, "Yeah, but that's not living spontaneously." Yeah, well, when you live spontaneously, you have to reap the whirlwind sometimes. Don't call me, you know what I'm saying? If there was a death in the family and say, "Hey, this was preventable."

Brian, that's what Texas was—the accidents in Texas. The reason they scared us to our soul is very psychological and very chemistry-related. So you and I watched a condition unfolding that everybody has seen for millennia, and that is snow falling on the earth. Then all of a sudden, we see people that have to get to work, they have a social obligation that they have to attend. But now all of a sudden, some of them aren't as well trained, some of the vehicles weren't up to power, some of the tire pressure wasn't right or whatever happened. And now we start seeing the moments before the crash that left the bank thinking, Brian, those seconds before the crash are what really get our heart going because we're going, "Oh, my gosh, if we could drive away, we would have left the vehicle. If we would have had some sand or cinders on the road." And so our brain starts playing "what if" games, and then all of a sudden we see the crash and we feel... we feel responsible a thousand or six thousand miles away because we could have done something had we been in that situation. We could have done something if we were the weatherman on the news the night before saying, "Hey, remember, tomorrow might change your life. You may wake up, have breakfast, head to work, and die on the road tomorrow if you're not careful." Broadcast, Brian, frankly, aren't like that. They don't start that way. "This will save your life at noon." They don't do that.

Well, yeah, and you... I think it goes into, like you said, that familiarity of what we're doing, is that how many times... All right, so you and I would put it this way: you and I likely, I'm assuming you have the experience, I'm guessing you do, have used the vehicle as a weapon before.

Yeah, absolutely.

Okay. So we... We also see intentionally using the weapon to attempt to murder human beings.

I wasn't going to go that far, but yeah, but I don't need legal counsel for that.

Yeah, when deadly force is authorized, you can use any means of deadly force. But what I'm saying is that so we have... You and I have, and a lot of people listening have file folders as a vehicle as a weapon system, or something designed to also do harm, because really it's designed to get you from point A to point B, and it's for travel. And I mean that's what it's designed for, but it has other intents or other purposes or other uses, excuse me.

So I compare that, so meaning if I don't ever see it as a potential hazard like that... I mean, yes, we're all aware of car accidents. Most people have been in some form of car accident, maybe as simple as like a little fender bender, a little bump, but have that experience. But I think that that's one of the reasons why we don't ever look at those icy conditions and go, "Man, there might be a hundred-car pile-up today with a whole bunch of people dead on my way into work." We don't really ever take those into consideration.

And I compare that to the parties, these... Okay, these gender reveal parties. I could do a whole episode on just them bashing them.

I think you're on the gender reveal, thank you. What do you want to tell us, Brian, now that we're live, now that you have the mic?

Yeah, I just think it's a bad idea. They've started forest fires multiple times, they've done all this stuff, whatever. And but here's where the cannon was involved, and the cannon blew up and all this stuff. So here's the thing, you can at a minimum go, "Well, what's a cannon used for?" Well, it's used to launch projectiles and make big booms. So I would say the potential for a disaster is much higher than just having a vehicle present, right? So we don't ever do those cost-benefit analyses of what we're actually doing. We get so excited in the moment.

And when it comes to vehicles, too, that's why I kind of brought that up, of if you haven't seen it, tasted it, touched it, smelled it... Any first responder listening, he's probably been to dozens, if not hundreds, of vehicle accidents and seen how dangerous it could be. But if you haven't, we just become so familiar with something that it doesn't ever look to us as threats. So I'm not just talking about vehicle accidents here, we're talking about how all of these situations happen, how that lack of basic critical thinking comes about.

Yeah. And so, on Saturday, for the first time in a long time, Shelly and I drove to Montrose. And so the roads were snowy, and there were certain icy patches. So we had to take her FJ (Toyota FJ Cruiser) rather than taking my truck. And the simple reason was that for whatever reason, on the dashboard, the time was coming up but the temperature wasn't. And so it was a quick fix. When we got home, she read through the manual, which I should have started at.

Right. Yeah, because it's Shelly. Start tapping on it a little bit.

Yeah. You're looking at, well, what happened is, I had taken my vehicle in and I had them install these tire pressure sensors because I'm very sensitive about stuff like brakes and tires. And now the temperature has to be up in the mountains. And so people are going, "Well, why did you worry so much about the temperature?" Because when the roads are wet and turn to freezing, they're dangerous. You have to increase your stopping time, cornering, lower your speed. And guess what, Brian, and here we have one-car accidents that are fatal. How do you call your family and say that this mock suicide in a vehicle was caused by inattention blindness or failure to anticipate the road condition? This is what we're talking about with critical thinking.

Look, your buddy with the cannon, the cannon wasn't a handgun. And handguns still sometimes misfire or you do something boneheaded and shoot yourself with it. So when you were out there and you were going, "I'm in a group, there's likely going to be alcohol served, I'm going to have an immense amount of black powder and a fuse." Do you get what I'm trying to say? Somebody should have thought that, "Hey, who's the one with Mel Gibson, Braveheart? Hey, Braveheart, you need to back off the fuel for a minute and take a look at the big picture."

And Brian, isn't that what we're saying? Aren't we saying, give yourself the gift of time and distance just for an additional second and check your math? I mean, it's that simple, isn't it?

Yeah, it... But it's... I think that's the problem is that it's not that it's, yes, a solution can be that simple, but it's not that simple for us to think of that. Why? Because you even brought up, I think you said it was something like, challenges or something about us wanting to challenge that, oh yeah, boundary stuff like that. But because that's also, I mean, if you think about it, that's like an evolutionary imperative, right? Or how we've progressed as a species and as a society and with everything that we do, right? Someone's always pushing or challenging the boundaries of whatever that limit is, whether that's certain human performance or that's me making a better phone or whatever that is. Like that's where you reap rewards. That's where humans, "Hey, I was the one who went out in the cave and I found this amazing place and now it's mine." You know, I reap the benefits of that. That's what we appreciate that as a human species, right? We like it when people do that. And this is kind of where it's almost a biological imperative, meaning it's inside of us all the time where we have to push that a little bit for a lot of people. And then that's what ends up bleeding, that's what can lead to these disasters, right? Does that make sense to describe it that way, though?

It's totally true. And but I would take it one step further, Brian, and I would say that you, like Shelly, approach things clinically and scientifically, which is amazing and wonderful. But I also am a street guy and I take a look at simple examples to street it up for our viewers or listeners.

So Shelly and I owned the ranch for 13 years and we had horses of all sizes, shapes, colors, and these weren't nose-to-trail, nose-to-tail trail horses. These were horses where you had to get up and ride them. And we were in the Colorado Rocky Mountains, so named because of the rocks. There was no Verlin Rocky that they were named after. And so when a person would come, they would say, "Well, listen," and this is advanced party stuff, "we used to do it on a thing called the telephone." There weren't emails back then. And the people would call us at the ranch on our rotary phone and say, "Hey, listen, what should I pack? Party line. What don't I have?" And in simple things, Brian, one: when you're at altitude, you have to drink more water because you get dehydrated quicker and you'll get nauseated and you'll get high altitude sickness if you're not careful. Number two: the sun is beating down on you much more than you've ever imagined sun could beat down on you because you're closer to it, so bring some SPF, and it's got to be the highest number that they sell. Literally, I want you coming looking like Grandpa on The Munsters, you know, with your skin all blacked out. Then the third thing, Brian, is a helmet. If you hold your hand up and say, "This is the withers on a horse," and you fall from that height and you hit your head on the rocks from the Rocky Mountains, your kid might be paralyzed or die.

And the people go, "Yeah, but that's not what I envisioned. I watched Spin and Marty on the Disney Channel." That's an old one for our viewers. "I watched some Brokeback Mountain." Brian's favorite. "We watched some kind of episode." Well, you saw it from the perspective of the horse on Family Guy. You think about it and think of that horse, Brian, and that horse is moving forward. So that horse, if it's going to trot, or it's going to canter, it's going to lope, whatever it's going to do, if you fall, again, we're just back to math. So why would, why would we invest stuff in, what are the things called on a bicycle? It's been so long. The little safety wheels, you know what I'm saying, that they would put on the back of a bicycle. You kids ride bicycles now.

Yeah, training wheels.

You know what I'm saying? Why would they invest in training wheels, training bra, training anything if you weren't going to have a challenge sooner or later in your life, right? That they were trying to prepare you for. That's all I'm saying. I'm not trying to be facetious. I'm just saying, when you're trained to do something, you train so you don't get injured.

Right. But so here's here's also, here's also the, it not issue, but everything you just mentioned specifically, like you said, for the for the ranch, right? In that specific situation, you literally said water, sunscreen, and a helmet. Like these are not like, but that's what I'm saying, it's almost, I think sometimes people find it like it's too simple. It's like, "No, we need to, we need more stuff here." Like, no, no, because like you're like, "Wait, that prevents..." I mean, you even, we've talked about it before where we've had, especially when we, I would call it more of our one-on-one personal training type stuff that we've done with folks before in the past and clients when they're like, "Well, you're talking about like air pressure in my tires and you're talking about, yeah, making sure I'm filled up with gas, I don't ever let it go below a half tank or three quarter tank, whatever you want to do every day you fill it up or something." Oh, there's these things. And like they're expecting some like high-speed ninja thing that you're working. It's like, "No, this is how you prevent things." You just said water, sunscreen, and helmet. People are like sitting there with the notepad going like, "No, like, tell me what I, right? What's your secret ingredient? What's he not telling us?" Right? That's no, no. And I think it's a good point, that's why I'm like laughing at it because it's like you just gave the three basic things that will get you out of, like if I had these three things on me throughout every point in my life, I would be, I would have a lot less head injuries, I would have, my skin wouldn't be leather, and I wouldn't have all the brain damage from being dehydrated.

No, you're exactly right. If you add eye pro to that list and have a good pair of gardening gloves around, I mean, think about it. It really is that simple when you're thinking about it, Brian.

No, it is. And then someone, Lisa in the comments—follow along on Facebook—they really like, "Do you think it's hormones that get released and addiction? People aren't aware of this." Like that, that's all true. Like when that's why when I brought it up, and that's a, that's a great point to hit on, because when I brought up like, especially, you know, I've done it before in different episodes talking about, especially with mental health stuff, but like, you know, "Hey, I hit that corner going 45 and I was supposed to be doing 25 but I made it and I'm fine and I pulled out of it just okay." Like, now that's man, that rush I get, I want more of that for a lot of people, too. And even just for more so for guys because it's testosterone, more aggressive, all that stuff definitely, definitely plays into that. Is a major factor in a lot of this stuff, too.

And for that viewer, caller, writer, male or female that wrote in, one spot on to, I want you to think of something very simple and do the research. Go do your homework. If your kid is in a car and the music is turned off, they're safer. If the music is turned on and it's a mellow station, they're still safer. If the music is turned on and it's rock music, they're more dangerous. If it's rock music and one other person that's their age in the car, it's ten times more dangerous. And if there's four people in the car, another ten times, it's exponential. I mean, read it for yourself. Now add to that, it's dawn or dusk. Add to that, it's raining. I mean, simple things like that. This is critical thinking, Brian.

"Hey, listen, Judy, I'll let you go out on Saturday, but you're not going out on Friday because of the storm. I'll let you go out on Monday night to the movies, but not on Saturday night because, you know, they're expecting something else." Those are the type of things, Brian. You and I did a podcast to tell people not to go out on the roads when there was rioting in places like Portland and Seattle, right? Because the wrong turn could cost your life. Following Google or following MapQuest could get you killed. So this is, this is going back to the basics. Your brain's chemistry goes, "If you thought that was cool, watch this." And the brain's chemistry is thinking, "breed, breed, breed." "I want these people to be my friends. I want them to be my tribe. So I will do these goofy things, these, you know, dress like a peacock and act in a stupid manner to be noticed because I feel that I need to do that to get that person's attention because I want to breed with them or mate with them or live with them." And I know people are going, "Oh, that's overly simplified." Yeah, look at the obituaries and then call me.

Well, that's what we're talking. It is that simple. I mean, you can get into, you can go into all these other different factors, but the simple thing is to avoid that. So it's exactly what you're talking about is understanding, hey, it's a cost-benefit analysis. I mean, part of the reason that a lot of this stuff does occur as well is, like you said, the more you're raised on technology, differences in what people have to do on a daily basis, even. Meaning, the more comfortable our life is, meaning the less we've had to do to use those survival skills, the less we're going to use them.

I mean, simple things, I always make the comparison of out here living in Southern California comparing that to growing up in Chicago. Like, you know, you grow up in one of these states where you have to get up extra early to shovel your car out so that you can go to work. Okay, well, that builds resilience and that builds adaptability and you have to learn how to survive in that situation to go. And that's why I say out here everyone's so goofy because they just never have to do it. It's always nice all the time. "What do you mean?" So I can expect less preparation out of someone living in that environment versus someone who's been out there going, "Now we put the chairs out in front of our house after we shovel off the street and if you park there, we're going to slap a kid to sit in that chair."

Brian, yeah, we used to hire a kid to sit in that chair. That was me. I sat in that chair and watched that spot for you.

Yeah, yeah. And Chicago is just, if you go, if you go park there, if you move that stuff, your tires are getting slashed. I mean, good luck with that. But that, that's what I'm saying, is that building that Kinder and Gentler in Detroit.

Yeah, only during the winter.

I was going to say, yeah, that's really what they're known for, being kindler and gentler. I think that's right on the side. "Welcome to Detroit, the kindler, gentler city." More like, "Good luck." And that first like that's what the sign would say. No, but that's totally true.

But look, listen, when the stakes are higher, Brian, the losses are higher. So, remember back in the day when we were doing early IED (Improvised Explosive Device) stuff for people and we were saying, "Hey, listen, every foot counts." And we didn't mean just the distance you would lose a foot or a hand and an eye. And those things blew. So when you think about something as simple as snow, okay, our neighbor across the street back in Detroit back in the day, it must be 50 years now, died, Phil Gerhart, while shoveling snow. Sudden stress of the heart, heavy wet snow later in the season. Do you get what I'm trying to say? Now, I know other people that went out and bought snowblowers. Well, it's just like the string trimmer. They're out string trimming and they pick up a rock and they lose an eye. We advance in technology, but we never seem to adjust the threat level posed by new things.

And you said it with that heavy car. Listen, you don't have to go out and to intend to ram somebody with the car or to run them over to kill them because they're shooting on a schedule. You can just simply not be able to stop in the distance and hit somebody and dislodge a retina or create a situation where they have to be extricated and lose a limb. All of those things when preventable, that's what bothers me. That's why I'm saying critical thinking will solve most of that by just taking a look at the situation and running a mental assessment on, "Here's the likely things that could go wrong."

This morning, I've packed a lunch, I've brought water, I have insulin or whatever drug that I may be on. We used to at the ranch, Brian, every wrangler had to carry Epipens. We had them at the bar, and we had them at the house. And the problem with Epipens is they expire and they're wicked expensive. And so you had to justify the expense that it was safer having them and throwing them away at the end of the year. Do you get what I'm trying to say? If you didn't use them, then not having them and have a horse or a human feel the pain and die.

Well, and you, you brought up that saying that I know it was a big one too because it was big in the explosive ordnance disposal community, bomb community, was that, you know, if you had a coin on one and you had a foot on there, "every foot matters." So literally, that was a, "Hey, like every person, your foot matters. You don't want to lose a limb or body part." And then the other side was, no, literally the distance. Every foot you're away from an explosion, your chances of survival drastically increase, I mean drastically. So I think that that's a perfect example for even just driving your car. I mean, every foot matters, every foot you have an extra foot of distance from that person during the inclement weather. Like it rapidly increases your chances of survival should they, should they, lock up the brakes or, or whatever happens.

Let me put that in perspective. In Warren, a long time ago now, a kid got clipped, and the teenage kid, early teens, and got clipped and they thought urban sniper, gunshot. What happened coming over and what it was is during the autopsy protocol, it was a hexagonal nut that was found embedded at the base of the kid's skull that actually did the trauma that killed him. And then the likely culprit, which we searched down and found, was a lawnmower. The maintenance on the lawnmower wasn't up to speed and the lawnmower's rotors came around, hit that bolt that came apart, hit the hexagonal nut and spun it at such a speed, over 900 feet per second, and it killed the kid. Now, how do you go back and say that the proximate cause was the lack of maintenance on your lawnmower and you killed a neighbor? Okay, that blows, Brian. Nobody wants that. But these are the little things that you can do a little bit every day.

Look, first of all, there's a show called Alaska Homes or something on TV, and when I'm looking for Ancient Aliens or news of the, that's my show, okay? I have to watch that, right? And so what happens is, the easiest market in the world has got to be Alaskan real estate because people from the lower 48 go up there and they take a look and they go, "Oh, my God, this is beautiful, great views and everything else." And then they walk them into the chemical toilet or the outhouse, and the guy goes, "Oh, no, no, you'll get used to it after this." And then they go, "Yeah, but the house is so beautiful, look at the views." Then they walk them into the next section and they say, "You don't have water and you only have propane heat or diesel." And they go, "Yeah, yeah, yeah." They do that in Gunnison, too, pal. And after the first year, they're selling, they're moving back to Florida or Atlanta or wherever in New Mexico or Arizona they came from. Why? Because you're not prepared for that. Brian, what was with the toilet paper in COVID? Nobody wanted to think, "Oh, my gosh, I am literally going to be using corn husk to wipe my ass." And so if you think about critical thinking skills, okay, your body already has certain things that it wants to do and it doesn't want to do. If you exacerbate that with a situation that's potentially lethal or fatal, Brian, you control it all. All you got to do is slow down time and go, "What are the three or five things that I need to take to work with me today that'll make my day easier and more fun and happy so I guarantee the likelihood of coming home?" Come on, how hard is that?

Yeah, well, you, that's what you said, it's always, and this is across the board and especially with what we deal with is it's, it's always the little things, right? I mean, that's literally what it is. You, when you talk about having enough gasoline and the right tire pressure in your vehicles, you're going, "Well, that's not a big deal." It's like, "No, that's, that's actually the biggest deal," right? You don't need the best airbag and this that, the other thing because you're thinking at "bang." Right? Everything left of bang is all of those little things that go into it. And I think that's an important remember because innovation outpaces tactical adjustments.

As Shay said in the comments here, you know, as he's following along is that, you know, innovation outpaces tactical adjustments, right? Meaning, you know, that, that we go, we outrun our headlights because we're relying on something that, you know, we, we haven't fully prepared for, I guess. But this when you get into the little things like that, and that's why I wanted to highlight when you said earlier about the, you know, having water, having sunscreen, having a helmet. I think that's a plays a bigger role in a lot of the cases we talk about, not just about, you know, a car accident or you talking about the ranch. I'm talking about, you know, different situations with whatever shooting was involved or someone crazy on the street doing this. All of those little things matter. And I think putting a name to that and attributing value to it is, that's difficult for us to do because running down that checklist, although it doesn't take long, is the one that's preventing it.

And I always give the example in airlines, right? The pilots, right? They go through a checklist every time they go do, every time they go fly, right? They have this set checklist they have to do. So even if that guy or girl has been flying that plane for 30 years and they know that checklist by heart, they don't ever have to look at that sheet and can go, probably, you could probably blindfold them and they could run through the checklist, right? What do they still do? They still have to go line by line, check it off, and make sure. Why? It's because you're preventing all of those things that, that could potentially go wrong. So now that's why when, you know, airline travel is so safe is because we've taken any type of those, we've tried to take out as much human error as possible by following very, very strict protocols and procedures. Is that best way to kind of describe it that you can then do that same thing in your daily life of, okay, before I leave the house, before I walk out that door, I always look out the window. Now you just start build a habit. Hey, before I get in my vehicle, I always take one walk around it to make sure everything's fine. Those are those little things that prevent, hey, when I get in and I start it up, yeah, I've checked to make sure how much gas I have. And once you start building in those habits, now that's what becomes your routine. So instead of having that, like, "Oh, I'm in a rush to be somewhere." You'll still be in a rush to be somewhere, guess what, you'll still do if you do it every day. You'll still do that walk around, you still jump in once you build up that habit of routine because people are saying humans are creatures of habit. So we will continue with that habit but modify that one.

Yeah, smoking's a bad habit, you can quit. Here's the thing, Brian, you've been poking the bear for about five minutes without even knowing it. So online, you know, read the, "Hey, so-and-so got certified in whatever." You know, "I got certified being able to keep their eyes open for a minute and look at their environment." And I'm thinking, you know, anybody that wants a cert, write me, send me what you want on it, I'll send it back to you, because that's such horse crap because it prepares you for nothing.

So a simple thing that you can do, and you talked about a bunch of simple things. So, I'm in Rogue Manor West, and I'm in the upstairs podcast bay or whatever else. So upstairs, we got a Streamlight SL20X that's charged and a battery flashlight that's right next to it. We have a Motorola radio and we have a Motorola that you can recharge on the charger or change the batteries, and the batteries are in the bedside drawer. So when we go to, and that's on each floor. And each floor is a different color. So upstairs is pink, the first floor is green, the bottom floor is black. The garage has its own fire extinguisher, so do each of the floors. So if you go to that station on each one of the floors and it doesn't look like a gosh damn militant, gosh damn armed castle, it looks like a regular home. But we have emergency equipment on each floor because heaven forbid, you don't know when you're going to need it.

And the idea behind the class with these certificates that everybody thinks is so important, at the end of class instead of getting a certificate or a coin, Brian and I give out a couple of things. We give out a tourniquet, we give out a door wedge, and if the, you know, gig is a money-making gig, not all of them are, we give out something as simple as a space blanket. Space blanket for shock, cover up evidence, cover up the crime scene. The tourniquet that you can use on you, and the door wedge that you can barricade if you need to be safe. And those items cost a couple of bucks and they're out of our inventory, but you know what, they're the most important thing to have in your briefcase or to have in your glove box.

People's reliance on guns, Brian, listen, there's not always going to be a situation where you can use a gun or get to your gun, but you can get to a tourniquet and it weighs virtually nothing and you can put it in the inside coat pocket. So you know me, I'm a realist and I'm also a, not a survivalist, so I'm not the guy that's got the big K-bar knife in the drawer. You know, I've got the little utility knife that can slice the seatbelts. I just, and that's what I feel sometimes is, I feel that people are, are telling our viewers, "Yeah, they got to spend a lot of money." They...

No, that's the thing is that there are places that, that absolutely do that. And when it comes to all this stuff, there are, the best information I've found has all been free. And honestly, it's, it's because people are putting it out there going like, "Hey, it's really not that hard. Here's what you need to do." And I, I think that's important to remember too in all of this is that we always, well, I always prefer, I want a low-calorie intervention, meaning something that I don't have to spend a lot of calories on because if I don't have to spend a lot of calories on it and it's not going to take me a lot of effort, it's much easier for me to adopt that. It's hard to get into a, you know, some elaborate training program for whatever, that's really difficult, man. Like that, that takes a lot of your time and effort and mental energy. But not, not to walk around, not to walk on my truck and check the gas and tire, tire pressure. Like super easy.

Yeah. And I need to keep using that because it is such a simple thing. However, walk around every time. When we walk into or get a rental car, when we're on the road, what do I do? Walk around and take photos of every angle of that car because I know I've had rental car companies call me up and go, "Oh, there was a scratch on the vehicle." And I was like, "Yeah, I'll send you the photos. It was like that when I picked it up." And you know what they immediately do? "Oh, sorry." They're just going to take it because all they're going to do is pin it on someone else. I was the last person to rent the vehicle, so they'll just pick me.

Brian, if they were traveling with us, if anybody, and feel free because we hate each other, we do nothing but argue the whole time. So if you want to travel with us, come free and hop in the back seat and you can talk to us. But Brian and I spend time with the airport at the rental car place and we stage our gear. So if we need it while we're on the road, we can reach those things that we might need quickest, more quickly than other things. We also do a quick GPS check. Where are the coordinates? How are our cons? What are we going to do? Those are things that take two or three minutes and we do them so often that we don't even think about them. But Brian, those escalate or elevate or increase our odds of surviving a horrendous situation and not being surprised. I think the element of surprise is a dangerous thing.

I think surprise, "Hello, happy birthday surprise!" Yeah, that's good.

So I don't like the bikini black surprise, you know. I've surprised people many times with that, including you, with the bikini...

The bikini wax. Yeah. I call it the Brazilian, but the idea is that there's other surprises not so much fun, you know. Yeah, that, that's the idea is to try and take, take away, the element of surprise on ourselves and put it on someone else. I mean, that goes into exactly what we're talking about on our last episode of home field advantage, right? About, about the element of surprise. That's what, that's when things go wrong, right? I mean, honestly, that's when when if something happens that I didn't immediately expect to happen, then I have no, I have no immediate response for it. So I, yes, I'm going to lock up my brakes on an icy road when that's the last thing I should do. I'm going to not... I mean, it is horrible as it... I mean, I saw some of the video from that Texas crash too and it was just here comes a truck, there's, there's already a pile-up and now this truck is still coming and it's doing 40, 50 miles an hour and just right into someone launching the vehicle. And I mean, just, just absolutely brutal because he, you know, how much time in there? He had no time. He had time to make a decision, didn't make a decision because he was so overwhelmed by events that he just crashed right into the vehicle. And I'm, you know, just from watching what I saw happen and knowing about human reaction time, opining, that, that is what occurred. You're saying they didn't have much to do, I get it. But if they had a few extra seconds in there, or it realized all that, or had already been only doing 40 miles an hour prior to that, and now they're only coming in at 15 or 20, that still increases their, someone's chance of survival.

You're stopped in a vehicle at an accident scene or flares where they're stopping and diverting traffic. Your attention has to be your foot on the brake, being prepared to steer out of where you are. And remember, your exhaust is icing that road even further. Your tires are now set on that ice and you should be looking at that rearview mirror, looking for an exit plan. But nobody teaches that stuff.

We had a copper, and I'll call him Toucan Dan. I don't want to get any closer than that back in the day. He just hated carrying an off-duty gun, and it was mandatory in our agency. So he bought a Lady Smith five-shot .38, and didn't want to buy gun leather for it because he wanted the smallest that he could put in his pocket. And so put rubber bands on the little grip so he could put it in his blue jeans without a belt and it wouldn't slide down through his underwear. And wore flip-flops and the tank top. And one day he's in a bank and he's just going to go up and cash a check and come out. And as he's in the bank, he feels that the .38 sliding down his right pant leg. It gets down to his knee, he's trying to hang on to it, not trying to look too suspicious. Keeps moving up in line, and it falls all the way to the floor. And he bends over to grab it, and he kicks it with his flip-flop and it goes spinning around into the crowd of people. Well, now it's, "Ah, it's a robbery!" And everybody's screaming and everybody's running.

35 years later, I can laugh at that and look back at it and use it as a true example of stupidity. But Brian, he did everything but go ahead and spend the money to buy that holster. Do you get what I'm trying to say? He did all these things to justify, "All the rubber bands will do this, and if I wear it with that," and all that critical thinking, Brian. You might talk about, "Hey, listen, if you can record it, you can prevent it. If you can record the incident, you can likely stop it." This is another one of those, Brian. This is another one where the timing of the event, if you slow time down, and in the comfort of your immense chair at home, think of three or four spirals that could occur, you're going to be much... Look, Mom always told you, "Hey, take clean pair of underwear," or, "Make sure that you have money in your wallet," or whatever else it was. I think those old urban advice columns were the best thing going. I think we've abandoned them.

Well, yeah, we have. We've abandoned it in favor of an app. There's an app to that, or, you know what I mean? "Go ahead and play in the yard." Is there an app for that? Yeah, yeah, right? So, so that, that's, that's a big part of the, that's a big part of the issue. But, I think, you know, all of us, we all get so wrapped into what we're doing that we often don't take the time to pause for that second and realize the situation that we're in. It's that, you know, how many times it's like the whatever that scale is, you know, it's like people with no or little training are easy to fall victim to these things as much as people with a very high level of training and experience, right? Because at that end, too, that's, that's where the people go, "Oh, no, we can push through this blizzard. We can keep hiking. We're fine. I've seen this before."

Thank you for that one. Jaeger sent us that one a long time ago. You remember we were talking about how lower levels of training or lower intellect means higher levels of violence, lower levels of training means less survival because you don't critically think your environment. And Jaeger sent us that time that he was doing the rafting. I can't remember the river, but it's just as you come out of Glenwood or Grand Junction, headed west. And whatever that little thing is in Utah, and they used to guide out of there all the time. And they were calling it hydraulics where all the water goes through a smaller area. And you remember Jaeger knew how many gallons per foot pounds of pressure and everything. And so those guys were the best in the world. And they were camping near there, and there had been a couple of flash floods. And they said, "This is going to be the highest waves ever. It's going to be the biggest cubic feet per minute." And they went and they died. They knowingly said, "Hey, this is going to be more dangerous, but we're at the top of our game." And you saw that with the avalanches, you saw that with the mountain climbers. So I agree with you, there's a segment over here that is so highly trained, they think it's never going to happen to me or we have the right equipment. We have the apps. And there's this other segment down here that just didn't think that lighting a cannon when they were surrounded by people might prove dangerous.

No, I, I think, I think that's a good point to kind of bring it in for a landing because that's a, it's one, it's an important point to remember too, how we even so-called subject matter experts or whatever fall victim to this stuff too, based on their own, you know, "Oh, hey, I've got this." And then people with little to no training, it's the exact opposite. They just don't, don't even know the situation that we're in. And I think the big thing remember is, I'm glad you brought it up, is saying that "every foot matters," right? That can be good, that can be used in so many different situations. And just, just in general, you, we talk about the gift of time and distance and having that second or quarter second or minute or day or month or year, however long you're, you're going, you're, you're trying to go back or however far away you're trying to get from, from an event or something when you're trying to plan something out. But even just, "every foot matters." It's like, "Well, how close should I be to a vehicle?" Every foot matters. The closer you are, I mean, it really it's, it's your own life you're, you're playing with here. So I, I think you got to take that seriously.

And the other thing is to reiterate, it's the little things. It's always the little things. So whatever that is in that environment, whether you're talking about safety or you're talking about security or you're talking about just raising your children, it's the little things that matter. It really, really is. And so if you focus on those little everyday things that you need to stay planned and organized, you, I mean, I mean, how many times, Greg, that, that's what ends up, that's what ends up saving you. That's what ends up working because that's what it is. It's like your buddy with the with the revolver rolling down his leg. Like, "Dude, you didn't take the time to put it in a holster and wear that correctly. Like, what did you think was going to happen?"

I mean, and you know what? The 17 times before, Brian, that he was in the bank the same way, it never happened.

And never. And that's how we die. That's exactly what they put on our tombstone. Exactly.

Well, that's what, "What doesn't kill you only makes you dumber," or bad at intimacy, or whatever. Right? It comes down to tombstones. I remember at the ranch we were doing some risky stuff and I was still going in and out of Iraq at the time and then just started Afghanistan. And I told Shelly, I said, "You know," I said, "when I want to, you know, the tombstone." And first she disabused me of that and says, "Oh, there's not going to be a tombstone." And I said, "Well, maybe the south pastor will put one of those pyres like the Native Americans." And you can... And she goes, "No, we're not going to go smell an ass for the next month." And I go, "What about putting me, my corpse, on one of the horses and just ride it right up in the wilderness?" She goes, "Not one of my horses." I've resigned myself to the fact that I've got to live as long as possible, and when I die, just go behind the shed and find a place to sit because that's about what I'm relegated to. But it's not going to be for lighting off a cannon at a birthday or pulling a kid on a sled.

Okay, yeah, I think, I think that's a good, good way to look at it. You know, how, how do you want to go out? Is this, is it you sometimes get to choose and old age is not a bad option. You actually a lot of times do get to choose, "Hey, is this the way I want to? If, if this goes bad, is this how I want to be remembered?" That's, that's always a good one. That's, that can get you to change your mind if you think, "Yeah, maybe, maybe I'll walk out of this place I'm in right now."

All right. And when you're talking about like prison wallet, emergency room, exactly. There's a whole episode, no exit. We could go into detail about, about yours, but don't forget to follow us on social media, everyone. Check out our Patreon, we're adding more onto there. It helps support the show. Appreciate all of our new followers and listeners. If you enjoy it, tell your friends about it. Go hit the reviews if you like it, give us some, some star ratings. That would be great. And don't forget that training changes behavior.