Joel Skousen Unplugged: Secrets of Survival, the Deep State, and What’s Coming Next

In this riveting episode of Preparedness Pro, we sit down with the legendary Joel Skousen, a man who’s not just read the book on preparedness—he’s written several. From designing high-security homes and retreats to mapping out the safest places in North America, Joel pulls no punches as he dives into the looming threats we face, the deep state’s shadowy maneuvers, and why true preparedness is about freedom, not fear.

We’re talking EMP strikes, globalist conspiracies, strategic relocations, and how to protect yourself when the grid goes down—this conversation is a masterclass in staying one step ahead. Joel also shares what it’s like to truly walk the walk, from running a self-sufficient farm to running for president.

So, whether you’re hunkering down in the city or eyeing a rural escape, this episode will challenge everything you think you know about self-reliance—and maybe even the world itself. Don’t just prepare for tomorrow—prepare for what’s really coming.

Join us at Preparedness Pro in our Facebook Group or on our blog where you'll find peaceful, practical preparedness advice every day of the week!

Transcript

Joel Skousen: Global Crisis Preparedness, Strategic Relocation, and the Path to Survival
[00:00:00] Welcome to Preparedness Pro, where being prepared isn't about fear. It's about freedom. I'm your host, Kellene, and every episode we explore the peaceful principles of preparedness and self reliance. No gloom, no doom, just practical solutions for everyday living that help you become more independent and prepared for whatever life brings your way.
From kitchen skills to financial wisdom, emergency planning to sustainable living. We're building a community of capable, confident people who understand that preparedness isn't about preparing for the worst. It's about being free to live your best life regardless of what comes your way. So whether you're starting your preparedness journey or you're a seasoned pro, you're in the right place.
Welcome.
Kellene: Hi everyone, it's Kellene, the Preparedness Pro. And once again, I have got a great guest for you. This man is legendary in so many ways. We, we could go for three hours easily with what he's got and, , and not stop [00:01:00] taking notes the whole time. This today is Joel Skousen. Joel Skousen is a prolific author.
He's a prolific constitutionalist. And he's quite the authority when it comes to preparedness. Joel has, among other things, he's written several books, one in particular that I loved is How to Implement a High Security Shelter in the Home, also Strategic Relocation, North American Guide to Safe Places, that's how I was originally introduced to Joel was through that book.
He's also written Essential Principles for the Conservation of Liberty. And the secure home. He actually helps with architectural design, construction, and remodeling of self sufficient residences and retreats. Joel is a political scientist by training, but he specializes in the philosophy of law and constitutional theory.
We're not going to talk so much about that as we are going to talk about the fact that he's designed all these self sufficient high security homes [00:02:00] through in North America and even in Central America. He's active in consulting with persons who need to relocate for security and increase self sufficiency. So this is the man whose brain you want to pick, and he's just fascinating.
Just by way of background, he was in the U. S. Marine Corps. He was a fighter pilot during Vietnam. During the 80s, he was also chairman of the conservative national committee in D. C. and most recently he was a presidential candidate for in 2024. Did I cover that just about right, Joel? 
Joel: Yes, you have.
That's very nice of you, Kellene. 
Kellene: Well, we're happy to have you on the show and I want people to understand the extent of of your vast knowledge that we've got you here for. So let me just start off your career spans, architecture, geopolitics and preparedness. For those unfamiliar with your work, can you share a little bit about [00:03:00] how, how you blended those three together?
Joel: Well, , I was one of the pioneers in the preparedness movement. I started, wrote The Secure Home in 1979. That goes back a long ways. 
Kellene: Yeah. 
Joel: And Strategic Relocation's been in print since the year 2000. And I'm also the editor of the World Affairs Brief, which I comment on world events at worldaffairsbrief. com from an aspect, a conspiratorial view of what the deep state is doing and what their media allies are not telling you. Now, , I really live what I, what I preach. , not only I am, trained in political science, which was kind of a lost career. All of, even at a conservative university, all my professors were socialists.
And that's what happens when you allow credentials to rule the day in universities. And you can't get credentials in the political science movement unless you get published in the American Journal of Political Science, which is a Marxist publication. So obviously there's no room for [00:04:00] conservatives in the field of political science, but it did serve me well when I got called by Howard Phillips to come back to, , Washington DC and chair of the conservative national committee during the Reagan administration.
But, you know, not only am I an active pilot from my days of flying F4 phantoms and the A4 Skyhawks in the Vietnam era. But I've also learned, mechanics, machine shop, welding. Because when you run a self sufficient farm, like I do, besides writing my world affairs brief and writing books, you know, you've got to learn to fix everything.
You've got to know how to weld. You've got to know how to fix tractors and balers and combines and other things as well as take care of animals and grow a garden. So I have practice in all of these things. And it started frankly, Colleen, when I was 17 years old, my uncle, W. Cleon Skousen, one of the greatest, champions of the Constitution in the United States, wrote the book, The Naked Communist, and I read that at the age [00:05:00] 17, and I'll tell you, I, it was a real eye opener, not only because there was an expose of so many communists in the Truman and Roosevelt administration, and some even in the Eisenhower administration, but I realized after reading his book that it was a lot of non communists in the State Department that were protecting the communists.
These turned out to be what we know now as globalists who run their own deep state, which is the enforcement arm of the larger globalist conspiracy, which is to bring about another world war, which will get us into a global government. And that's important geopolitically to understand because you can't really prepare unless you know what the threats are.
And I have been, as a political scientist, long advocate of the fact that we're facing a, another world war, it's going to be a nuclear war with Russia and China, probably by the end of this decade. So, it's not just economic collapse or the dollar collapsing, which really hasn't happened, even though it's been predicted for many, [00:06:00] many years.
 , it's this war that's going to change life because you're going to start with the EMP strike. It's going to take down the grid for over a year. Because we don't stockpile any of the long distance transformers that are going to be blown up in that EMP strike by that electromagnetic pulse. And you can imagine what life would be like without electricity for a year.
I mean, pillaging, robberies, stealing, everything. And just millions dying from starvation because there's no food from California being delivered. There's no electricity. There's no sewer. There's no government services. You even try to get police to bring people in when there's mobs coming down the street threatening their families.
I don't think it's going to happen. 
Kellene: So 
Joel: we're looking at a very serious problem here. And that's why my broad based background of knowledge is so important towards understanding how to prepare. 
Kellene: Well, let me ask you this before we get more into the preparedness, because this is one thing that really struck me about you.
You do walk the walk, you know, running [00:07:00] for president under the constitution party was a bold move, especially given the challenges that third party candidates face. What motivated you to take on this challenge? What did you hope to accomplish through your campaign?
Joel: Well, first of all, 
I, I've been in my writings in the world affairs brief, fairly pessimistic, very pessimistic about the chances of overturning the deep state through the electoral process because of how deep the control runs.
I mean, they control about 75 percent of Congress because they have dirt on them. That's what all this surveillance is about. You know, they start out as state senators or representatives, and they are immoral and the deep state has their texts and has their photographs and has their telephone conversations all recorded so that they can control people.
But I didn't set out to run for president. I was asked by the constitution party to give the keynote address at their, April conference in Salt Lake city. Which I accepted. And then a couple of weeks later, the chairman of the party asked me to [00:08:00] run for president. They wanted a credible person. And as I considered it, Kellene, even though I was pessimistic, I felt it gave me a, a larger platform to be able to Talk about the threats that are coming to the country because no other presidential candidate was talking about the future of war, but how to drain the swamp.
I mean, Donald Trump says he's going to drain the swamp, but he's never studied conspiracy and you have to understand the history of the deep state, which I'm the notable expert in the entire nation on the history of the deep state. You've got to know all the illegal acts of government to know who's deep state and who isn't.
I mean, the reason I know that James Comey and Robert Mueller and even Christopher Wray replaced Comey were deep state, all three of these were involved in the cover up of 9 11, which was a deep state operation from beginning to end, including the hiring of the terrorists and the loading of the buildings with explosives.
I knew that Brett Kavanaugh, even [00:09:00] though he was a conservative jurist, was deep state that Trump nominated to the Supreme Court because he was second in command to Ken Starr in the government cover up of the Vince Foster murder. He was the attorney of the Clintons who was killed by the deep state because he was going to, he was getting cold feet and going to testify before Congress.
And, of course, deep state actors like the Clintons and the Bidens have this immunity from their deep state influence. And, , he was threatening that immunity and they had to kill him, but Brett Kavanaugh covered up for that. And so it isn't that he isn't conservative. It's just that they can telephone him in the middle of the night.
And because they've got, you know, he was part of a deep state operation, they can get him to switch sides. And he, along with John Roberts, do that regularly when the deep state needs them to change their position. At the Supreme Court, you can bet those two will be the ones to change.
Kellene: Well, you've spoken about the likelihood of a third world war and the risks of an EMP.
Can you share with us some of the [00:10:00] evidences or trends that lead you to believe that these scenarios are imminent? 
Joel: Yes. Well, in the first place, one of the unique pieces of information, which I'm the only journalist in the United States that published this when it happened was that the Soviet Union faked their own demise in 1989 to 91.
It didn't really happen. I mean, they took it down directly by orders, not that, you know, the traditional narrative is that there was this uprising of freedom movement in the, East and they couldn't contain it. But it really isn't true. Eric Honaker on his deathbed said he got orders from Moscow to stand down the Stasi and let the student protest in Leipzig go forward, which started all of this.
The KGB were stood down in red square, so they didn't arrest any of the protesters. when they were listening to Yeltsin standing on the tank talking about new democracy in Russia. And of course, the communists had controlled the television station and they didn't pull the plug on Yeltsin's speech. They let it go [00:11:00] forward.
You see, all of this was indications to me that this was a planned, phony fault in order to hide the fact that they were still communists, and they still are, and Putin is still a communist. He's not a Christian, he's not anti woke like he's portraying to the American conservatives,, but they did it to get aid and trade because they were getting behind in the arms race, and the U. S. Obviously, if I, as a journalist, knew that they'd faked their own demise, they knew it too. But they covered, they were still covering for Russia and China. Remember, part of the history of the Deep State, which I've elucidated in my presidential campaign, was that it was Western globalists, clear back in 1917, that funded the Bolshevik Revolution.
They allowed China to go communist by cutting off military aid to Chiang Kai shek. They allowed Castro to come to power by cutting off military aid to Batista. These were not communists in the state of America. These were globalists who want to create [00:12:00] conflict in order to create future wars so that the, the globalists have a milder form of socialism called Fabian socialism, which you still own it, but we control it.
That's what Fabian socialism is. And that's what we've got in the United States more and more. And that's what the EU has in spades. They control everything from what you can eat, what you can drink, where you can fish, where you can, you know, everything. And that's why the English wanted out of the EU and the Brexit.
But going back to World War Three, I mean, they have been building Russia and China, allowing them to steal our technology and even giving technology. Conservatives are very ignorant of these things. They don't realize that in Lend Lease after the war, when there was no reason for Lend Lease anymore to Russia, the U. S. gave, and actually these were globalist agents within the Truman administration, gave the Russians the rest of the nuclear plans to the weapons, nuclear weapons that they couldn't steal in the Manhattan Project. This was documented by Major Ray C. Jordan, who was in charge of the Air Force [00:13:00] Base in Great Falls, Montana.
They were shipping all this over the pole to Russia. And then, later on, he discovered that they were giving them a shipment of the first shipment of enriched uranium. Because they had the plans, but they didn't know how to enrich uranium. We made, that is our globalists, made Russia a nuclear power. And then Russia, in turn, made China a nuclear power.
And then they allowed China to steal and from our technology. And they've done even during the Reagan administration, the commerce department was busy shoveling technology, military technology to China. And then in the Nixon administration, his national security advisor or handler was none other than Henry Kissinger, an arch globalist.
He talked Nixon into giving Russia the miniature ball bearing technology that allowed them to have the miniature gyros necessary to guide multiple warheads. Up until that time, they only had one warhead on their missiles. We gave them [00:14:00] multiple warhead capability. Now, why would we do that? Why build these enemies?
Because that's the only way you can get the United States citizens to give up national sovereignty and get into a militarized global government. Now, COVID didn't do it, even though that was a worldwide deception. 9 11 didn't do that, although that engendered a phony war on terrorism, where we got a nasty reputation for intervening in countries that had nothing to do with 9 11, like Iraq and Afghanistan.
But you see, they need one more war. World War II got us the United Nations, but it had no power. It has no military power, it has no taxing power, it has no regulatory power. They need one more war. And in order for that war to be effective at getting us into a world order, a new world order, they need to have America's military attacked.
And that's the plan of Russia and China, not to strike cities with nuclear weapons, but to decapitate our military and then blackmail us into submission. And our government knows this. In [00:15:00] fact, they signed under President Clinton. a secret presidential decision directive, PDD 60, which instructed our military forces to absorb a nuclear first strike and then retaliate afterwards.
Now, for those of you not in the military, you may not understand that to absorb a nuclear first strike is to lose all your missiles in the silos, all your major military bases that can project power. And the only thing you've got left is about half of your submarines, because half of them, President Clinton in 1997 told the Russians he was going to keep half of our submarines in port at any one time just to make sure that we had no intentions of striking them.
Well, of course, Clinton wasn't making those decisions. Those were his globalist handlers. But in any case, We only have maybe seven, six or seven submarines out there, and none of their warheads are big enough to hit hardened military targets. They can hit cities, but it's currently not our military doctrine to hit civilian cities.
In fact, that's a war crime. We did it to [00:16:00] the Germans in World War II and were never prosecuted, but in any case,
because of my knowledge about PDD 60, and the fact that we're going to absorb a nuclear first strike, and the phony fall of the Soviet Union, that our government has gone along with. And, in fact, you know, when you allowed all of the Eastern European nations to join NATO, none of the communists in those governments were ever purged before they joined NATO.
Unlike World War II, where you purged all the Nazis, none of them could take any public positions in the German government. After World War II, but not so after the phony fall. And so Putin has hundreds of spies within NATO. So it's a lie when he says, you know, if Ukraine joins NATO, you know, I can't tolerate that, you know, NATO, he's already got NATO on his border in the Baltic States.
They're not a threat to him. And you don't need to be on your border to be a threat with nuclear weapons from anywhere in the world. You can target it. So you see, the entire Ukraine coup was not a Western coup, as most conservatives have been told, including Tucker Carlson. [00:17:00] It was a communist coup, just like the phony fall.
The communist president of Ukraine was the one who allowed the coup to win. by standing down. Remember, that's how they do these phony falls. They do issue a stand down order to the police to let the protesters win and the bear coup, which for the riot police that had the protesters in the Maidan Square bottled up for nine months, were told to stand down February and a Friday in 2014.
And that's how the Western coup won. So even though the West did finance the protest, it only succeeded because the communist president stood down the Berkut and let it happen. Then he fled the country, claiming that his life was at risk from the unarmed protesters. And then on the next day, the Ukrainian parliament, which was controlled by the communists and the majority, ousted their own communist president.
Now that's like the January 6th protesters going up to Capitol Hill and there's no Capitol Police. Could they have stood down the police? No, only Nancy Pelosi could [00:18:00] have. And that's like the Democrat controlled promise, Congress, removing Joe Obama. How believable would that be? Would that be a right wing coup?
Not at all. You see, this is a planned fake coup and it was done in Ukraine to bring about a, the appearance. Of a nationalist president, Pietro Poroshenko, who proclaimed that he was anti Russian, but in fact, he was best friends with Russian oligarchs. He was a plant within that, and he campaigned in Ukraine on how he was going to be very tolerant of the Russian speaking people in Donbass and Crimea and let them be self governing.
As soon as he became president, he reneged on those promises and began to persecute the Russians. And that's what justified Putin doing his stealth invasion of 2014. Now you see, the communist president couldn't have done that. That's why he faked his own demise. If the communist president had started to [00:19:00] persecute the dome boss of the Russians, they would have said, Wait a minute, this doesn't make sense.
He's a friend of Putin. Why is he persecuting us? But you see, if he fakes his own demise, allows a phony nationalist. Poroshenko to be president, then he could be believable as someone who could threaten the Russians and justify Putin's invasion. So you see conservatives and preppers need to understand how complex these conspiracies are.
The globalists play both sides. The Soviets and Russians play both sides, good cop, bad cop, you know, it takes expertise to analyze this stuff, but I can tell you, I can simplify it for her and tell you that Putin is not a Christian, he's not anti woke, he's not trying to take down our deep state, but to establish his own version of the new world order with Xi Jinping of China.
They've always been alliance. We're not driving them in the arms of China by this proxy war in Ukraine. What the [00:20:00] globalists are doing, by the way, is weakening Russia to make sure that they can't use nuclear weapons. And they can't because they can't occupy it. If you can't occupy and you nuke somebody, they just rebuild and come back after you.
So, you see, he has to wait, Putin now has to wait for China to be ready, who does have the armed forces, materiel, ships, etc. to occupy, before they start World War 3. Probably the trigger event will be a Chinese attack on Taiwan. And Taiwan says, or the Chinese say, they'll probably be ready for that in 2027.
Now, it doesn't mean the war is going to start in 2027. It means the window of opportunity for China opens because that's when they will be fully prepared militarily, they say, to strike. It could be as late as 2030, but we're going to see this war in our decade. I mean, these people are not building these weapons for nothing.
There's no weapon that's ever been developed, Kellene, that has not been used eventually. And [00:21:00] so you got to stop preparing, stop thinking in preparedness in a very narrow band of just for a few weeks or electricity for out for a month. Now we're talking about major preparation and I don't mean to discourage people.
I just mean that no matter how hard you think it is to prepare now, when there's no electricity and no shipping and nothing available to stores, yeah, that's Impossible to prepare. So we still window of opportunity to prepare. We've got to use it. 
Kellene: Let's switch gears here. Let's talk about because you talk about people relocating quite a bit.
, even give them great ideas as to how they can do that. You warned of the dangers of staying in cities during a crisis, especially with the potential for pillaging. What specific steps could urban preppers take to mitigate these risks if they can't relocate? 
Joel: Very good question. Remember the reason that urban areas are the biggest risk is population density and that means that when you have a thousand people [00:22:00] per square mile there's no way to be self sufficient in that period.
There's just no way. It's too high density. You can't even grow a garden in the backyard of a suburban area even if you have the land because your neighbors are going to be pillaging those tomatoes before they're even ripe. So what can urban people do who can't relocate? In the first place, you can do a partial relocation.
You can relocate to the outside of the cities, the ex, you know, near the rural areas where you can have little larger lots, or even an apartment house that's out toward the edge. You don't want to be in the middle of a city, of L. A., for example, you have 20 million people and there's only five exits out of that valley.
Five exits by road out of that valley. And they're clogged during traffic hours today, let alone when everyone's trying to leave that valley. So you see, if you are on the outskirts of urban areas, even if you're an apartment dweller, you can get out first. [00:23:00] And you don't want to be, you don't want to delay.
If you're a homeowner, you can relocate by purchasing a home, and I recommend people always get a home with a basement in it. Now, I know that's difficult in certain parts of the country where they don't do basements, even though they can at some greater expense. But if you've got a home with a basement, at least you can do a basement shelter.
And you, you mentioned my book, How to Implement a High Security Shelter in the Home, or the High Security Shelter Book, as it's now called. And that's one of the cheapest way to get a secure home. hidden area within your basement. And the reason I say hidden is because you're not going to be able to use arms and weapons against mobs coming down the street.
I mean, you're not going to be shooting people just because they're starving. Even if they are breaking into homes, they're just desperate. You've got to be able to get out of the way. And that's what a concealed safe room in a basement space where it cannot be found easily gives you that kind of protection.
You've got living facilities, you've [00:24:00] got light, you've got electricity, battery power with the new solar generators that are available, you've got your food storage down there, you've got water storage. And, you know, you'll even have an antenna if you follow my preparations in the secure home leading up to the attic where you can get long distance shortwave radio broadcasts from other parts of the world that aren't under attack, where there isn't an EMP strike that still are broadcasting.
You can find out what's going on in the world. So those are some of the recommendations I make for people who can't relocate. You've got to at least get to the outskirts. very much. And you've got to hopefully get a place for the basement. I mean, even if you can't leave immediately, you want to wait until the initial wave of panic is over with.
When if you do have to leave that you can not in relatively safety, it'll still be much more difficult than if you get out early, but you know, it's, you don't want to be like in Katrina where you get out on the [00:25:00] freeway and all the cars are stalled and you're stuck in a parking lot on the freeway and running out of gas.
And you have to walk away from your car, right? Now, one of the things, if you can't relocate to the outskirts, you at least have to map out how to get out of a large urban area around, through the beltways. The beltways are like a moat around a city. You can't get past it, except in one or two places in every beltway where there is an, an underpass or an overpass that does not correspond to an exit or entry to the freeway.
You can't get through those underpasses where there's an entrance to the freeway because they'll all be clogged with people trying to come off the freeway or get on the freeway. But if you look on Google Maps and just scroll around the beltway, you'll see there are at least two or three in every beltway, an overpass or underpass that does not correspond to an entry to the freeway, which will be free to get through.
You need to know where they are. You need to map [00:26:00] out how to get there. off of the major roads, even if it takes you a little while. And then the only way that's a benefit Is that if you have advanced warning and I'll tell you, that's why I tell you about the trigger event of world war three, we're at greatest risk for that story.
Not in Ukraine, not in the Middle East, but in Taiwan, because North Korea says that they will strike the U S if we attempt to stop China from taking Taiwan, China's going to try to take Taiwan. We are going to try to stop it. I've got friends still in the military say they're planning on intervening. And if we do, then North Korea is going to attack South Korea, and we've got 26, 000 troops in South Korea.
We have to respond to that. And if we do respond, that starts a World War III with China, and they will do, I believe at that time, the preemptive nuclear strike on military targets, not cities per se. But if you're within 10 miles of a military target, you need to relocate. not build a bomb shelter. That's expensive, cost you an extra 50-60,000 [00:27:00] dollars in preparation to do blast sheltering.
It's cheaper to move if you're within 10 miles of a nuclear target. And in my book, Strategic Relocation, I list where all those targets are in color maps of every state.
Kellene: What are some of your, , most preferred areas of the U. S. for people to relocate to? 
Joel: Well, in general terms, the east, east of the Mississippi is less preferred than west of the Mississippi.
If you look at the satellite pictures of the night sky in America, from the Mississippi on east, it's just a blaze of lights. Out west, except for the major cities, it's pretty dark. And that shows you where the population density is less. So that's in general terms. Now another area is you need to make sure that you get places where you can do basements.
Unfortunately, in most of the Appalachian areas of the east, you can't do basements because about two to three feet under the ground is a layer of rock and it's very difficult to do basements without [00:28:00] blasting. Unless you're on a sloped terrain and can grade the thing and get a daylight basement out of it.
That's possible in those Texas is also a problem with the hard pan caliche soil Difficult to do basements East Texas is more capable in that regard
there's also the problem of Like Florida, for example, a lot of people are moving to Texas, Florida, North Carolina and South Carolina and All those population densities are going to be increasing. The problem with Florida, for example, if you've only got two major roads leading out of that whole peninsula, so that's a recipe for getting locked into a very hot muggy climate without electricity and very difficult to grow things in Florida if you haven't, you know, gotten used to that.
That's why Florida is a zero rated state. Several states are zero rated because they are blue states are very heavily democratic controlled. And as we saw during the COVID restrictions, these are very tyrannical emergency powers, which they will use against [00:29:00] people, including confiscating of your weapons and making it very difficult to survive.
So I exclude. All the blue states, even though you can find certain retreat areas like in California, just because it's so onerous, the government there, the top rated states are either in the central Midwest or the inner mountain West. Those are the top rated states and strategic relocation. The Midwest has the disadvantage of having.
Uh, tornadoes. Most of those states are in Tornado Alley, Missouri, Oklahoma, et cetera. But you can, if you've got your shelter in a basement space, you see, protect against that. And, it mitigates those. And most of those are red states, fairly conservative states. They're, they're a little bit, you know, higher in population density, but the land is cheaper there than it is in the Intermountain West.
When you get into the Intermountain West, the government kept most of the land in those states, and so about [00:30:00] half of the states in Nevada, Utah, and Idaho are owned by the federal government. In BLM land, which you can't occupy or use, but still the Rocky Mountain states of Utah and Idaho are the highest rated states because of the distance from population densities.
Now, I'm not talking about Boise or Salt Lake City or Denver, which are high density population areas, but Salt Lake City, for example, is 11 hours to the population of the of the North Pacific Northwest. They're eight hours away from San Francisco, Sacramento. They're seven or eight hours away from the Los Angeles Basin, and it's trackless desert between there.
There's no way people are going to get to those areas from those west coast areas. The refugee flows will be stopped by the Nevada desert and to the east by the Rocky Mountains separating Denver from Boise and Salt Lake City. So that's what makes them, plus the fact that you have got very conservative religious.
population, which [00:31:00] is about 80 percent conservative. So those states are not going to turn blue, and they'll knit together faster because conservative Christians tend to stick together and help one another in a crisis rather than riot. Now I'm excluding from that. The major urban areas, Boise and Salt Lake City, which are all Democratic, you know, every major urban area in the United States is Democratic.
Because your job oriented people, which tend to be blue collar and less educated about conservative constitutional principles, tend to go to the urban areas. Now remember, when the CMP strikes come, if you're in an urban area, you're there probably because of the job. But remember, the job's going away.
When there's no electricity, nobody's going to have a job. There's no office work. You're going to be leaving at some point or another. And that's going to be the only bright spot that I see in terms of preparedness is that you've got to survive this war. You've got to prepare to get to [00:32:00] safer, conservative rural areas.
And that's where I think there will be remnants. You know, the Lord will always preserve a remnant. In every major crisis, no matter how it was, whether it was even at Jesus Christ time, there were persecuted Christians which went into retreat and were preserved. And the same will happen in this particular war.
So don't believe that, you know, that it's, It's useless to prepare. It isn't useless. You need to survive the war and then you need to prepare to live permanently in rural areas where you can reestablish conservative majorities, which will be even stronger then because of the conservatives leaving the cities and going to the rural areas.
Kellene: Well, let's talk about that because that was one of my questions. I mean, if somebody listening to you, just on its face value, that can be very discouraging mentally and spiritually. What do you do to stay mentally and spiritually strong in the midst of everything that you know? I mean, you, you've forgotten more than I'll ever know.
Joel: [00:33:00] Well, My usual presentation is two hours long, and I've got four hours in my mind, you know, that I can do non stop to tell you about what's going on, especially if we get into the history of the deep state. But first of all, I am not discouraged because one, I am prepared. The more you prepare, the less stressful the future becomes.
Because you have options. You have electricity. You have, you know, ultimately you have fuel storage. You have food storage. You've got either a well or a cistern so that you've got water even if it's other things. And you've got, you've stockpiled, , I believe in eliminating your future need for money.
Every time you go to the store, you need to buy extra. If you're buying duct tape or super glue or nuts and bolts, let me get some extra and stuff. I pick up nuts and bolts on the road when I'm jogging or out walking my dog. And I have accumulated a huge supply over my 78 years of life, a huge supplies of spare parts, [00:34:00] nuts and bolts and screws, and even bent nails.
I just put them in a bucket. If we run out of nails, I can straighten nails. You see? I stockpile, you know, lumber and wood instead of throwing it in the garbage instead of, you know, it's amazing what you can stockpile if you get, but you've got to have space to do that. I understand that a person in an apartment isn't going to be able to do that.
We still have time to rearrange your life and sometimes you're going to have to rely upon people, other people to help you, family or friends who live in rural areas. But ultimately I am a religious person, a Christian. I, I rely on the Lord. I am not one of those Christians that believes. I'm going to be raptured out of the tribulation.
I don't think the Lord has ever done that to his own people. He's only makes them go through the tribulation because that's how you grow. That's how you learn to rely on God is to see the miracles that he provides, but you have to listen to the voices. of conscience where the [00:35:00] Lord prompts you to prepare.
And Satan's right there trying to, Oh no, you can do it later. It's not going to happen. You know, there's always this battle going on in our mind, whether it's getting up on time or eating the right food or exercising where you're, the Lord's prompting us to overcome our weaknesses. And Satan's trying to make you feel comfortable where you are.
You have to learn to listen to the voice of conscience. in order to get prepared to know when it's coming. And you can feel the warnings when they're coming, just as a lot of people feel that things are going. So because I listen intently to the voice of conscience, watching for the signals, I feel confident that the Lord will help me out.
Now, I'm not one of those that believes you can just say, well, it's up to the Lord. I don't have to do anything. By the grace of God, he's going to save me. I just don't believe that. I believe the grace of God is the abundance of promptings that you get. in conscience, encouraging you to prepare, [00:36:00] encouraging you to do the best and to link up with neighbors and help, , you know, sustain one another.
Even though I don't believe in joining militia groups or other formal, , preparedness groups. And the reason I say that is because you tend to share too much when you're in a preparedness group, everybody knows what you've got. And when they run out, guess whose house they're coming to. They're coming to your house because you've told them how much more preparedness you've got than they are.
And once you start sharing, you're all going to be starving within two weeks. Now that may sound calloused and hard, but if you're preparing to save your family, you can't save the whole world. You can't feed the whole world. And so you've got to be careful. about encouraging people to prepare, but careful about sharing what you have so that you can maintain your privacy and your food supplies from excessive demands and threats when, and believe me, you haven't seen threats, you've seen starving people.
So share 
Kellene: with me about how you reconcile the need for community [00:37:00] because no man is an island. , the need for community cooperation and coming together, , while still maintaining, you know, OPSEC. 
Joel: OPSEC, of course, means operational security, and that has to be very important. Well, here's the way I reconcile this, K as if you're going to go out alone. Do as much as you can, and keep it private. And you don't do. If you're going to do formal preparedness groups, you do it for sharing knowledge and expertise, but not what you've got personally. Now there's a difference, and you can distinguish between that.
You can go to meetings, and in my city, and in Utah, where about 50 percent of the town are preppers, they have a weekly preparation meeting. Okay, and people go there and they share with one another and encourage one another to prepare and they have a speaker each Thursday, which talks about a different aspect of preparedness, but that's where the limit is [00:38:00] now, even though people may ask you, well, what are you doing?
How much food do you have? Well, you know, you just have to say, well, you know, that's private, you know, with me. I'm trying the best I can to prepare. But, you know, let's concentrate on how to do it rather than talk about what I have or what you have. You just have to be prepared to not share what you personally have.
 In terms of knowledge, because you're guaranteeing it's a pro in any preparedness group, you know, the one person or two people have more money than the rest. And it's amazing as I've been part of preparedness groups, how the less endowed tend to expect the ones that have more money to help pay for what they need.
And that mentality of looking to the person who has more as if, because he's a part of our group, I have a right. To what he's got because we're all in this together. We're a community. Well, you see, you've got to still maintain private property rights and the individual [00:39:00] rights. And the only way to do that is to share knowledge, but not facilitate.
Everyone needs to prepare as if they're going to rely on themselves. And then when the crisis happens, then when you prepare to share, you have to be prepared to do it very carefully. Now, for example, I stockpile rice. That's something that I'm going to give out to people. It doesn't require a wheat grinder.
It doesn't, you know, a handful of rice will keep people alive, etc. Rice is relatively cheap. You know, I really stockpile a lot of rice, wheat, beans, you know, the big staples that are cheap, rather than the expensive freeze dried and dehydrated foods. I mean, I can buy for a year's supply about three tons of these bulk suppleus compared to a year's supply of the expensive freeze dried or other foods.
Now I have that for variety. I don't, you know, the first thing you stockpile is the bulk. Now you don't want to have to move that bulk. So you've got [00:40:00] to get relocated before you really stockpile on the heavy stuff. The big buckets, five gallon buckets full of wheat and rice and beans. You start moving that it's going to cost you triple what it is to buy it.
Kellene: And it took an entire semi truck. It was not fun. And you can imagine all of the comments that I heard as people helped me unload it. So there goes some of my OPSEC.
Well, I can't thank you enough, Joel, for your. Your commitment and your passion to what you do folks. I strongly recommend checking out his books all of them as a matter of fact , you'll notice he's no nonsense. He doesn't he doesn't pussyfoot around the topics because he's just too well engrossed in the expertise of it But I strongly encourage joelskousen. com. That's where his books are There's just something about those Skousen genes and the Constitution, man. You guys, you guys have those genes in spades, and I'm fascinated with what I read. Also subscribe to his brief. Tell people how to [00:41:00] subscribe to that, Joel. 
Joel: It's at worldaffairsbrief. com and, , on the left hand side, there's a little sentence that says request a sample.
If you click on that, you get the current world affairs brief and it tells you the options to subscribe. It's only about a dollar a week, 48 a year. And my price hasn't gone up since the year 2000. Never increased the price of my books or the newsletter, even though I've lost at least half the value of that.
But, I realize people are hurting for money and so, I do feel that I know people are used to getting things free on the internet, but. I put in a lot of time and effort and a lifetime of work and you know People are worthy of their hire, you know, that's right Benefit to people. 
Kellene: That's right Well, joel, thank you so much.
And to get more of joel skousen, please go to his site joel skousen. com I can't thank you enough for being on the show today and for sharing your expertise and your passion. Thank you so much joel 
Joel: Thank you. Kellene. Bye now
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