Home Defense and Survival Summit

Spy & Survival Briefing Presents:

Home Defense and Survival Summit

Doug Hill: Okay. Welcome everybody. My name is Doug Hill. I’m the director of Laissez Faire and publisher of Spy & Survival Briefing. Welcome to our first ever Home Defense and Survival Summit. We’re hosting this event today for a few different reasons. First, you, our lifetime subscribers, have asked for it. We get lots and lots of reader mail, and it’s very clear to us on this side that you want to feel more confident and prepared to confront and manage and survive lots of different situations that arise, which fits perfectly for us because it’s part of our mission here at Spy & Survival Briefing to provide you with actionable advice to live more independently.

Today, what we’ve done is we’ve compiled our top two experts in this field. They have real professional experience in government and in military to share their safety and survival secrets. What I’d like to do is first make a few introductions. First, we have Jason Hanson. He is the editor of Spy & Survival Briefing. Jason comes from the CIA. He’s a former CIA officer and security specialist. He’s also the CEO of Global Protection and Intelligence, who, if I remember correctly, Jason, Trump is a client or was a client at one time.

Jason Hanson: Was a client, correct. Yes.

Doug Hill: You’re not covering him anymore?

Jason Hanson: No, not anymore.

Doug Hill: He also has his own business, Spy, Escape, and Evasion, which was featured on ABC’s Shark Tank recently. You got a deal with Daymond John.

Jason Hanson: Correct.

Doug Hill: I’d just like to welcome you. Thank you for coming all the way from Utah today.

Jason Hanson: My pleasure to be here. Thank you.

Doug Hill: Also with us, we have Cade Courtley, who is our most recent contributor to Spy & Survival Briefing. Cade comes to us via the Navy SEALs, where he was a sniper, assistant platoon commander of SEAL Team Two, and platoon commander of SEAL Team One, and served in Bosnia, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Cade Courtley: Correct.

Doug Hill: He’s also author of SEAL Survival Guide: A Navy SEAL’s Secrets to Surviving Any Disaster. On top of all that, Cade has also been in Hollywood where he is a host and producer of Spike TV’s Surviving Disaster, which is shown in over 150 countries, and host of the original TV series America Unplugged, correct?

Cade Courtley: Correct.

Doug Hill: Welcome. Thanks for coming.

Cade Courtley: Thank you. It’s a pleasure to be here. Jason, I’m honored to be a new member of the team.

Jason Hanson: Hey, I’m glad to have you. We’re going to have some fun today and give our listeners some great information.

Doug Hill: What I wanted to do is just kind of set up today. This event is about you guys, so I want to hear, and the listeners want to hear from you. What I’m going to do is I’ve compiled all the questions that people have asked. It’s very clear that they have four distinct areas of concern. We’ve asked what are they most concerned about, and they told us. Those areas are, in general, power outages, riots and civil unrest, privacy, and identity theft, and home security and home invasions, and how to protect themselves in all those scenarios. Those are the large areas that we’re going to cover today.

What I’d like to do is start with the power grid. We’re so reliant on our electrical systems. When we lose power at my house, I often find myself walking down the hallway flipping a switch, expecting it to come on even though I know the power’s out. We’re so reliant on it nowadays. I’m going to read a few questions from readers, and then I’m going to ask each of you how we handle these types of events. Wayne R. he says, “My largest concern is what I can do to prepare for when the power goes out. I ask this because I have a CPAP machine at night. I doubt that I’m the only one with this concern.” Another reader writes in, Dale B. “My biggest concern is an attack on the electrical grid, which could lead to false declaration of martial law.”

Obviously, when the power goes out, we lose access to the internet and all sorts of things. What are some simple things, Jason, that people can do to protect themselves from power outages and the effects of power outages at their home?

Jason Hanson: Well, it all depends on what the power outage is. Is it a typical, we’ve had a snowstorm, a tree fell on an electrical box or something, and we’ve lost it for three days, or is it an end of the world type of situation where we’ve lost it for a year. If it’s a regular situation where, hey, the power’s out for a couple days, well of course you’re going to have your flashlights, you’re going to have plenty of batteries backed up, generator. For my own home, I’ll tell you exactly what I do. I have a propane generator. I have propane because you can store propane almost indefinitely, where gas — I don’t want a bunch of gas in my house. I have a propane generator that can generate my fridge, all that type of stuff.

Now, if it becomes a crisis situation. The propane generator, or generators in general, is a bad idea. Because when people get desperate and they hear that humming, they say, “Hey, that guy’s got power. We’re going to go to his house.” That’s why I think it’s very important for readers to differentiate between “Hey, the lights are out for a few days, so let me fire up my generator. Let me have my candles, my flashlight, all that stuff,” versus it’s gotten really bad. The grid has been taken down by a terrorist attack. We may have no electricity for 30 days, six months, and so on. That’s when you’re going in survival mode. I mean, I’ll get to that in a second. I don’t want me rambling the entire time. I’ll let Cade take over from here.

Cade Courtley: I honestly think that this would be the absolute worst case scenario, is we lose our grid. We lose electricity over a long period of time. Take a couple of recent examples. Hurricane Katrina, half the deaths of Hurricane Katrina were violent-related deaths. Then let’s take Super Storm Sandy. They were less than five miles away from Manhattan, and they were without electricity for upwards of 10 days. It went barbaric down there. The point I’m trying to make is that when people get hungry, and people get thirsty, and they get cold, you’re going to see the absolute worst in humanity, as those two examples I’ve already done.

Now, you imagine a Super Storm Sandy or a Katrina on a national level. I mean, it will literally be the Walking Dead, but the zombies are going to be the people that are hungry and scared. I mean, it brings all these things. Now, bring it back to the, “Okay. This is a short-term power outage,” everything Jason said is dead on. Then I would also say you have alternatives or backups. Solar energy is fairly affordable now. To have that … Now, you’re not going to have everything in your house running, but it is another option in addition to a generator that will enable you to maybe keep your water pump or your refrigerator working.

You can even get wind power. You could buy those things. Again, it’s going to be a very limited draw on that thing, but it will be the essentials during a short period of time. Then, just briefly, the thing about the Martial Law, I think I already touched on that but again, try and imagine the very, very worst in humanity, and then do that times 10 if we lose our grid on a national level over a long period of time. It would be a worst case scenario.

Doug Hill: The grid goes down. I’m out of power. You gave some good solutions on things I should do to restore the power for mission-critical things that I need. What else can people do to protect even … let’s keep that three-day versus longer time comparison. For a three day outage, what other thing should I do in order to make sure that my family’s safe and prepared in that type of scenario?

Jason Hanson: You’ve got to have the basics. You always got to go back to, “What do I need to survive?” I need food. I need water. I need clothes. If it’s the middle of winter, you need heat. For short-term, have your 72-hour kits, obviously. I, personally, I know this is going to sound like a lot, I have a year and a half supply of food in my home. It’s mostly number 10 cans. My wife goes shopping at Costco and buys a bunch of soup cans and this and that. We’ve got the rice, we’ve got the beans, we’ve got anything and everything. I’m a firm believer you should have at least a year’s supply of food. Everybody thinks it sounds overwhelming. Of course, I didn’t buy it up overnight, but if you build it up weekly, and just buy a little here. You can do it for as little as $5 a week. I know that, because I’ve helped people do it for $5 a week.

I’ve built up that food supply. I have a month’s supply of water in my home. I have these stackable jug things. Water, because it takes up so much space, I don’t have a year, but I have multiple water filters. That way, I can go to the lake near my town, I can go to the river near my town for all that stuff. Of course, I’ve got firewood. I have a wood stove. Think about, as Cade mentioned, in those worst-case scenarios, when humanity is going crazy in the streets … I mean look at Venezuela with their currency collapse and all that and people going through trashcans and standing in lines. Do you really want to be going through a trashcan, or do you want to be standing in line for a government handout, or do you want to go in your basement or go wherever you store your food to take care of your family? I think people need to remember the food and the water storage and heat and all that.

Cade Courtley: Yeah. I mean, dead on. Couldn’t agree more. I always say two things to people when they ask about survival in the broad sense. I say, number one, “What’s the first thing that can you, that’s the first thing you need to address.” Again, the environment during the winter, it’s the heat and thirst during the summer. Address that first. That should be your priority list. Number two, 90%, I’d even say 95% of survival, is preparation. Just like Jason said, he’s good to go for a year and a half. He was able to do that relatively affordably and in a short period of time. That needs be in the mindset. It isn’t for most people, unfortunately.

You talk to somebody and you say that you can’t use your cellphone for an hour, and they’re going to be completely distraught. I tell people plan on living without assistance for 10 days. Start with that. Okay. Take the three day thing and bump that up to 10 days, food, water, shelter and then I will add the final element to it, security, because as I spoke of earlier, you’re going to have to protect your family and the stuff that’s going to keep you alive, because other folks are coming for you.

Doug Hill: We’re going to definitely touch on that, because we had a lot of questions on home security and home defense techniques and stuff. I know that you both have thoughts on that. One guy, he asked a very specific question. I know we talked about this a little bit earlier, Cade. He wants to build his own electrical grid. All I can assume that he means … that was Nicholas B. … All I could assume that he means is like how can I be reliant on just the source of energy that I produce without having to worry about if the grid goes down or not. Do either of you have any thoughts on that?

Cade Courtley: I think we kind of touched on it, but it’s, I guess, when he says his own grid, he’s autonomous. He is providing for himself. Jason talked about the propane generator in addition to maybe some solar in addition to maybe some wind, Mother Nature and a stove. Kind of back to the basics, basically.

Jason Hanson: Yeah. I take a different position. Cade and I come from totally different backgrounds, CIA versus Navy SEAL, but one thing we realize, it’s great to be able to survive with almost nothing. I take that point of for the short-term, I’m going to have all the creature comforts I can, but in the long-term, I know that I don’t need much to survive. I don’t want to have to worry about building a grid or maintaining it or worry about looters taking it or hearing the humming. I want to be able survive on, again, just the basics, next to nothing, which doesn’t … I mean, may sound horrible to people listening, but isn’t that bad. As long as I’ve got food and water, we know that 99% of it is mental.

I’m kind of the simplifier life type of person, where I love all the creature comforts of life, but I know if they go bad, because I have all my preparations, it’s going to be an inconvenience, and it’s not going to be death like it is for a lot of people.

Doug Hill: All right. I think at this point, I want to move on to our second set of questions from people where they’re very concerned about riots and civil unrest and societal breakdown, regardless of what causes it, right? If you get hit by a car, you don’t care what color it is, right? That’s not the first question you ask. It doesn’t really matter why there’s a riot, it doesn’t really matter why there’s a civil unrest. There are some very specific questions that people have. I’m just going to read a couple of them out, and you guys can think about what things people should do.

This guy, David, lives in the Bay Area. He says, “We’ve seen recent senseless riots by people who think they’re entitled, and now won’t get what they thought they might if the election had gone differently. There are of course some other somewhat legitimate reasons as well, but since I can’t carry here …” concealed carry is what I assume what he means … “I’m concerned about threats from a distance.” He feels safe at home, but he’s worried about when he goes outside, what he should do. How can people protect themselves while they’re out and about? What should they do first?

Cade Courtley: Well, I think the first thing you do is … He says he feels safe at home … really, trying to put together a plan of, “Okay, I’m going here.” I mean, we used to do this all the time. It was second nature for us, but we would do route planning. We would look for areas on that route that could be considered danger zones, possible areas for attack. Then, we would reroute. To put it in his terms, his objective is to go to the grocery store, but maybe it’s safer to do a route where he is going out of his way to get there instead of going through an area that might be known for high population of people who are a little bit irritated right now, or crowd avoidance, or areas where he feels he might be in a situation where … This would be quicker to get to the grocery store this way, but there’s heavy traffic and there could be some areas where I find myself in a gridlock or in a stopped situation in my vehicle.

Now, I don’t want people to start going into a hypervigilant mode, because that’s not really living. What it is, is trying to be aware of a daily situation and put a little bit more time and effort into planning, “How am I going to do this to avoid possible danger areas,” like I said.

Doug Hill: Jason?

Jason Hanson: A lot of it comes down to common sense. If you’re going to large group gatherings, whether it’s a concert, some type of event, you know where there’s that group where dangerous things can happen. Know the two exits. Make sure you’re staying on the outer perimeter. I mean, what my wife would always do, because I have three young children, is take pictures of what they’re wearing that moment. If, heaven forbid, something does happen, you can say, “Okay. Little so-and-so was wearing a blue T-shirt this and that.”

In addition to that, one of the biggest things is still keeping her head up. I flew here last night to do this with you guys. I’m on the plane, and I’m just watching these people engrossed in their phones and one of the flight attendants trying to ask this lady a question and she has no idea what’s going on around her. He’s talking about, “Being out. I’m not comfortable,” but if you’re driving and your head is up and you’re scanning, you can see something a mile down the road or 50 yards or whatever it may be, and you know you’ve got to throw it in reverse. Since most people are zombies or drones, whatever you want to call them, they don’t see that happen, which is why they end up in these dangerous situations.

Every morning, when I leave for my office, I’m scanning around my car and making sure … Well, I’m a little more paranoid than the average person, but I’m making sure nothing’s going on as I look to the stop sign and do all that kind of stuff. I think that’s what import is, just keeping your head up and not blindly going through your day, because you’ll see those guys riding or about to ride and you’ll know, “Maybe I shouldn’t walk into that shopping center, or maybe I shouldn’t go to that restaurant, etc.”

Cade Courtley: Again, it’s a simple thing of being aware of your environment. You’re going to a mall, you’re going to an airport, you’re going to a concert, you are surrounded by strangers. Put your damn phone in your pocket for a while and just look around.

Doug Hill: Both of you, I know, have written about this. Jason, it was the first chapter, I think, in your book the most important thing you learned at the CIA, which was situational awareness. That’s just even more important nowadays that people are situationally aware. What kind of tools do you guys carry when you go out on a regular basis? What do you guys carry for self-protection. Self-defense tools, that sort of thing?

Jason Hanson: If I’m somewhere where I can legally concealed carry, I’ve always got a gun on me. It’s either a Springfield 1911, or a pocket gun that I carry. It’s the Sig Sauer P238. I’ll usually have a pocket gun or a gun on my hip inside the waistband, always got a pocket knife on me, always have my tactical pen on me. That’s the one item that I take anywhere and everywhere, courthouses, airplanes and all that. I’ll have a lock pick set on me. I’ll have a hair barrette and bobby pin to escape handcuffs, or any kind of restraints. I’ll have my paracord keychain.

Now, I wear a belt that has these compartments. A lot of this stuff is in the belt. It’s not like my pockets are overflowing or anything like that. That also has a handcuff key. Now, I realize the average person doesn’t want all of that stuff. It’s just kind of ingrained in my mind, but I’d say at an absolute minimum, if you’re not going to carry a gun, at least have a knife and a tactical pen. I mean, knife, hopefully you’re only going to be opening your Amazon boxes, but the tactical pen, besides writing, could save your life. Those are just a few of the items that are in my pocket and on me on a daily basis.

Doug Hill: How about you?

Cade Courtley: Many of the same things. Then, to address if you’re not allowed to carry, if you’re in a state where your concealed carry does not apply, and I feel the need to do something, I’ll … Personally, I will carry stuff called bear spray. I can’t recommend that people do it, or I can’t give advice on when to use it. That would be based on the situation you found yourself in. I found myself in one of those situations. It was an extremely effective, nonlethal alternative to rectify that situation. It’s perfectly legal in all 50 states.

Another option, if you don’t have the ability to concealed carry, is an asp. It’s one of these things that telescopes out and it goes from eight inches to about 21 inches. Double check on this. It used to be legal in all 50 states. I know at the very least, it is no longer legal in California and considered a felony. Double check on that one.

Doug Hill: Okay. A lot of people see on … anyone that reads anything on the survival side of things a lot about bug-out bags. Cade, I know you have go-bags. Can you guys name like four or five things … If I’m creating a bug-out bag for myself, what are four or five things that each of you would put in there that you must have?

Jason Hanson: Obviously, I’m going to have some food. You’ve got to have your three days of food. Got to have some water, plus water filter. I’m going to have multiple ways to start a fire. I’m going to have matches. I’m going to have a Swedish FireSteel. I’m going to have a Bic lighter, because obviously, make things easier when you can. Also, I have dryer lint in there. That way, it’s easier to start a fire, to make it easy as possible.

I’ve got a lot of that stuff, but one thing that is strange that I have in my bag is I have a miniature ax, or a hatchet, whatever you want to call it. Again, that’s one of those things where it’s like, “What am I putting a hatchet in there?” It has so many uses from cutting, to slicing. You can use it for self-defense. You can use it for building fires. A real quick true story is a few years ago, we were up in Wyoming at the top of a mountain, in a cabin, coming down this road that was super slick with ice, ended up sliding down the road, slamming into a guard rail. Our car was just packed with snow. It was rock hard, because we’d slid and smashed all the snow to the guard rail.

I was there with relatives. Of course, many of my relatives joke about me having this hatchet and all this crazy stuff in the back of my car. Nobody could dig it out with their hand. It was that packed. We were stuck midway down this mountain, something like 14 below. I took this hatchet out of my bug-out bag in the car and was able to hack out the snow. We were able to dig it out with our hands. We were able to get down the mountain. Have a hatchet. You never know when you’re going to use it.

Doug Hill: That’s a good redemption story

Jason Hanson: Of course, I told all my cousins. I was like, “Who’s laughing now, folks?”

Doug Hill: Let’s take some video of this, shall we? Cade, how about you?

Cade Courtley: Some additions to that, water can be kind of heavy, but you’re going to go through it pretty fast, so definitely a way of filtering water. I think something that people commonly forget about is if you have any kind of daily prescription medication, have that in there. Most doctors will be reasonable if you say, “Hey, I’m creating this 72-hour go-bag, and I need an extra week of medication.” If they aren’t reasonable, then you say, “Hey, I lost my medication on a trip,” and go get a refill.

It’s good to have currency and low bills. I also have the ability for recharging my cellphone, my GPS through a USB port, and then I’ve got a small solar panel that recharges that. Those are just a couple additions to what Jason had mentioned earlier.

Doug Hill: Perfect. Good stuff. Going back to the civil unrest and preparing for riots and stuff. A couple of questions from readers about family safety and access to family, if they’re not all together, when something happens. I was wondering if each of you can kind of talk about whether any scenario planning or tools that you use to make sure that you have … everyone understands where they should meet and that sort of thing for like access to family if they’re far apart.

Jason Hanson: Totally. My family plan is pretty simple. My wife and I have two locations we’ll meet. In our town, if something goes down, can’t make it back to our house, roads are blocked, here’s location one. For some reason that’s unavailable, here’s location two. Now for our kids, we all assume that my wife and I are both going to go to the same place to get the kids. Meaning, we’re assuming one or the other is dead, if it was some catastrophic, crazy scenario. We’ll both go to pick up the kids. Whoever gets there first, we leave a note. We have items in our car to leave a note, a market and a piece of paper that we can duct tape up or gorilla tape up and it’ll say, “Hey, I picked up so-and-so, 12:59 PM. Here’s the date. I’m headed here next.” That way she would know I picked up one of our kids, and vice versa.

Then we also have some radios we use. I always butcher the name, but BaoFeng radios. They’re great radios for communicating. We use those. We have multiple ones in our home and in our cars. That way, if everything else has gone to hack cellphones, we can at least communicate through those. It’s a relatively simple plan of where to meet and, “Hey, we’re going to pick up the kids,” and leave notes for each other.

Cade Courtley: For that to be effective, and you touched on it, it has to be assume all communications are down. It has to be a location and a time. In the military, we call them a “No comms plan.” The radio went tits up. At this hour, we’re going to meet here. If nobody shows up there, then six hours from that point, we’re all going to meet here. It was all based on locations and times. Do the same thing with your family. Assume the cellphones are gone. “Okay. We’re all going to meet at one of two locations,” and make one that makes sense that wouldn’t be accessible for the other one, sort of like an evacuation plan from your home. One’s on one side, and one’s on the other, in case one of those routes is not passable. It’s based on, “Okay, we’ll meet here at sunset following the event. Then, the following morning at sunrise, following the event.” Then from there, it becomes, “Okay. Start working your way to our ultimate destination, or our ultimate rally point which is here.”

If you guys have this simple plan figured out, everybody will be like, “Well, okay. I know they’re not here, so I’m moving to here.” Ultimately, hopefully, the entire family ends up on the safe side.

Doug Hill: Yeah, safe. We’ve got some questions about, I assume that this has to do with like the lone wolf discussions and people that … sleeper cells and things and there are public mall shootings and things like that, these horrific, horrific events. People are interested in hearing your take on how do you identify and handle a situation where you might be out in public and you see something, and you’re not sure how to react. Can you walk through identifying factors of things that might lead you to think that something bad is about to happen?

Cade Courtley: Yeah, step one, put the phone in your pocket, keep her head up, and look around. Step one. There’s no step two if you don’t do step one. It’s as simple as that, situational awareness. Most people, when they’re actively monitoring what’s in front of them, what’s around them, most people actually will just instinctively pick up on something that doesn’t feel right. Give it a try. Go to a mall and just be like, “Okay, I don’t know why but I just looked at that three times, sort of instinctively.” People always say, “Okay, it’s 80 out, somebody’s wearing a heavy coat.” That doesn’t make sense. That should be an indicator.

Facial expressions tell everything. We talk to folks that have been in intelligence, like Jason, or folks that are professional poker players. The face will tell you so much. You look at somebody, eyes are darting around, eyes are down, swiveling head back and forth, hyper awareness. That’s not right. That should be an indicator something’s going on. It’s just sort of starting with these things.

It’s a slippery slope here when you start saying, “Well, look for a certain gender, look for a certain age group, look for a certain ethnicity.” You don’t want to go down that path. In 2017, part of those need to be factors of, “Okay, that person is wearing the coat, eyes are darting around, they’re the between the ages of 20 and 40, it’s a male. Okay. Now I’ve created a list that I need to go and tell somebody and report this.” If you feel stupid, then you feel stupid, but if you fail to do or act on something when it starts adding up on your little checklist, shame on you, because that could mean 18 deaths.

Doug Hill: Jason, you have anything to add to that?

Jason Hanson: I think, as Cade just mentioned, the Catch-22 is yes, it’s most likely going to be a male, but don’t fall into that trap, because it can be anybody. I think the most important thing is it goes back to having a plan for everything, once you’re prepared to get peace of mind. Active shooters, unfortunately, become a more common … I’ll tell you my plan very quickly … is a shot’s going off, you’re at the other end of the mall, get to safety. Take care of your family, get to safety.

Problem becomes when shots go off and it’s two feet from you, or the guy enters the room you’re in, you have to go after him. I think that’s what we need to convince the American public to do. The Israelis, they’re surrounded by people who want to blow them up. We know this very dangerous area. Their security is excellent, but they’re trained to swarm, to rush every single time. We’re not trained that way.

It’s unfortunate that we have these instances where people are killed when the shooter walks in somewhere, and all these people are just freezing there, playing dead, or not moving, and they’re all in arms reach, you could do something. If they swarmed, a lot of lives will be saved. I think that’s something that, again, not taught in schools, but it should be taught in schools in a non-scary way of, “Hey, bad guy comes in and you’re all the way away, run away. Bad guy comes in, he’s right here. Don’t just stand there. Don’t just let him start talking to you and asking your religion, and then he’s going to kill you. Disarm him, however you have to.”

We don’t have to teach 72 ninja skills, human instinct, when someone is going after you, you know how to attack. You can know how to gouge their eyes or punch them in the throat, or whatever. That’s my big thing is have a plan. What’s the proximity of the guy? Can you run away and get to safety or do you need to act, if not, you’ll be dead.

Cade Courtley: Yeah. I mean, absolutely. The vast majority of our population is not prepared to react appropriately when they start hearing gun shots. They’re just not. I mean, unfortunately, most of them are going to freeze, and we need to learn to react in a way that makes sense for 2017.

This is a little note of caution for all you folks out there that are concealed weapons carrying folks. I think it’s important. I can’t admit to this, but I have in the past fantasized about rolling up on a bank, seeing a guy coming out of the door with a ski mask on and dropping him from behind my door in the parking lot. Right. I admitted that. Now…

Doug Hill: I’m trying to keep a straight face here as you’re admitting that.

Cade Courtley: I admit it. Now, let’s take this one step further, though. There are a lot of folks out there, they’re like … It happened just last week in Arizona. A police officer was being engaged. A guy with concealed weapons permit rolled up on the scene and took down the guy who was shooting at the police officer. Great job. Well done. Let’s take this to the next 10 seconds. Let’s assume that then a second police officer rolls up and what he sees is CCW guy shooting towards my fellow officer. He didn’t see the previous 10 seconds. What do you think he’s going to do? He is going to drop that guy who is engaging. That’s what he would do.

All you concealed weapons permit folks out there. Yes, carry, it’s your right. Address a situation as you should, that you’re in, absolutely. Then just think about, “Okay, the situation is neutralized. My next immediate goal is to now present myself as a non-threat, whether that’s sticking one arm in the air, whether it’s doing a low port on your handgun,” but think about the next second after you’ve neutralized the situation as a red-blooded, patriotic American doing his duty. Now you could become the next victim just by somebody not seeing the whole picture.

Doug Hill: That’s a heroic scenario that could turn horrifically wrong. Hopefully, no one has to deal with that, but in today’s world, we always do. All right. I want to move on to the next segment here. We got a lot of questions about privacy protection and preventing identity theft. Jason, I know you have written and done a lot in this area, so I want to put just this initial question out to you, how do I protect myself from cyber invasion and theft? What are some simple things that people can do to protect their identity?

Jason Hanson: It’s a lot easier than most people think. Most people think it’s going to take all this computer hacking or wizardry and all that stuff, but first simple thing is put a freeze on your credit report. Super easy to do. I’ve had mine for … what … 16 years now. It keeps people from taking out a bank loan in your name, from buying a car in your name.

Doug Hill: Your credit is frozen right now?

Jason Hanson: My credit is completely frozen. Has nothing to do with a credit card. It’s two separate things. We have our … what is it … TransUnion, Equifax and Experian. You put a freeze on each of them. What they do is once you put the freeze, they give you a PIN. Let’s say a 10-digit PIN. If you’re going to buy a house, or if you’re going to buy a car and you need somebody to check your credit, you just call them up, give them your PIN, and you say, “Hey, I want to release my freeze for the next 48 hours, or the next 72 hours.” Then they check your credit.

Cade’s been on Shark Tank, like I have. They check everything. They check your credit, your background. I got a call from the producers when I was getting ready to go on. They said, “Hey, we couldn’t check your credit, you have a freeze.” I was like, “Yeah, I forgot to lift it for you.” That kind of stuff. It’s great that it works.

Doug Hill: It works.

Jason Hanson: Absolutely. That’s one of the easiest things that I would do. Another story, and I don’t know if Cade got the letter too, is when everybody with clearances got hacked by the Chinese and the U.S. government gave up 22 million records, I got the letter in the mail that said, “Hey, congratulations. Chinese government and North Korea and all them now have your social and every single thing that you filled out on your background check form for your top-secret security clearance.” Nothing I could do about it, but I’ve got everything frozen, I’m doing all this stuff. It is what it is. Credit freeze first.

Two is virtual private network, anytime you’re surfing the Internet. Called a VPN. Long story short, is a virtual private network encrypts your traffic when you’re surfing the Internet. You can search them online. I use one called TunnelBear, but there’s a lot of them out there. Just do your research on the Internet. If you go on a public Wi-Fi, let’s say you’re in a hotel, let’s say you’re on an airplane and you get on that Wi-Fi, if there’s a hacker on board, he can hack into it and basically read your mail — literally see everything you’re doing. If you’re using your VPN, then it’s encrypted, so I can be on Delta flight and searching the internet all day long. I don’t have to worry about anything getting hacked. I’d highly recommend that nobody ever surfs any public Wi-Fi or anything without having a VPN.

Doug Hill: Is that a cheap service, the TunnelBear?

Jason Hanson: Yeah. Mine is, I think, it’s $50 a year. Most of them between $50 and $100 a year, so it’s dirt cheap, but still when I’m doing classes, I will ask people to raise their hand, who have a VPN, and I think probably 95% of people don’t. It’s so simple. Just to even expand further, is not only do they hack the Wi-Fi, but they create dummy Wi-Fi spots. If you went into Starbucks, it may say “Starbucks two and Starbucks one,” Starbucks two could be a fake Wi-Fi spot that some guy’s created. You go in there, you log into everything. He’s also reading your mail.

Those are probably two of the easiest things to do is get the VPN. Make sure you have your credit freeze. Then just another one quick one, we talked about in the past of credit cards are hacking … excuse me … criminals are hacking your credit card, because it has an RFID chip. I have an RFID blocking card called an Identity Protection Card in my wallet. That way, they can’t suck out the information on my card. If you want to, you can wrap your credit cards in tinfoil. I mean, you could buy those credit card RFID-blocking wallets. There’s all types of stuff, but I would absolutely have something that’s protecting your chips in your credit card.

Doug Hill: Cool. Cade?

Cade Courtley: That’s awesome. I just had one other thing. Folks that are doing the phishing, you getting the email with the … Anytime I get an email from a financial institution that I’m part of, I will never respond to that email. I will contact them directly, because you’ll get this one from … Say you’re a Wells Fargo banker, and you get a Wells Fargo email that says, “Hey, we’re having problems with your account, contact us right here,” and there’s a call to action button right there. Never respond to those emails directly. Go ahead and get on the phone and say, “Hey, this is my account number.” You know which number you’re dialing, and it’s not the phone number on that email either. Because I’ve had a few of those just recently. It’s like, “No. Everything’s fine.”

Doug Hill: That’s good advice.

Jason Hanson: Let me jump in here, because the big one going around now is the IRS scam. The FBI is calling you … and it actually happened to me … is the FBI calls you and says, “Hi, this is special agent so-and-so.” He’s got an Indian accent, just to let you know. He says, “You have back taxes.” “Okay, how much back taxes?” “$1,300 in back taxes. You’re going to get arrested if you don’t pay this $1,300 in back taxes.” Of course, it’s a scam and nothing happens, but people have been paying it. I think The Wall Street Journal, or something wrote it up, about how these Indian call centers are making millions pretending to be FBI agents. I’m thinking, “You’re scaring people for 1,300 bucks … I mean, jeez, you should …” all that. Just be very careful to these phishing scams that are going on.

Doug Hill: One of the things we left out is cellphones and GPS tracking and things like that. Warren wrote in saying, “How do I evade normal surveillance we tend not to think about? Like GPS tracking on our phones. Any advice or anything I can do?”

Jason Hanson: I am more old school and weird. I have a flip phone. That’s what I use in my primary phone. GPS tracking is turned off. Has no apps. You can’t do anything. It’s a $10 flip phone I bought at Wal-Mart. You can have that. That goes with convenience and security. A lot of people don’t want to go to that level. I mean, one of the things I do, consulting a lot. We talk about what happens if you want to disappear. Deal with a lot of domestic violence victims. They have the motivation to do all this stuff because they have a husband and they’d kill him. The average person is probably not going to want to get an old school cellphone that can’t do anything to live off the grid kind of thing.

Doug Hill: Okay. I’ve got another question. I’m going to read this whole thing out because I don’t understand it. Let’s see. Jeff writes, “You had an article in the latest issue about secure passwords, but you didn’t mention password vault programs, like KeePass, which generates very secure passwords.” What are your thoughts on programs like KeePass, if you know specifically anything about that specific one, or alternatives that you prefer?

Jason Hanson: There’s a ton. There’s LastPass. There’s, I think, One Password, whatever the names are. I don’t like them because you’re putting everything, all your eggs in one basket. They’re not bad. I have a lot of friends who use them. The problem is that they’d become compromised, then it’s all there. It’s almost the same thing … While, I talked about my food storage and water storage and all that, I do have alternate food storage. That way, heaven forbid, my house burned down, I’ve got guns, ammo, food, water somewhere else. That’s what I look at is you’re putting everything in one basket.

What I personally do. Again, this is more old-style, is I have all my passwords somewhere. They’re written out. There’s a different unique password for everything. I have backup copies in a safe place you can never find. Again, it’s a convenience thing. If you’re not worried about that being hacked, then sure. By all means, use it. If that company ever became violated, if they ever got hacked, if the Russians, or whoever’s hacking [inaudible 00:41:09] got hold of them, well you’re up the creek without a paddle.

Doug Hill: Okay. Can you tell if you’ve been hacked, like if your phone’s hacked, or email’s hacked? We got a question here from Sarah saying, “How would you know if someone, a cyber terrorist, the government, an ex-lover, has been reading your emails, for example?”

Jason Hanson: Well, if the pros are doing it, you’ll never know. That’s why they’re the pros. If the intelligence businesses, or foreign intelligence agencies, you’re never going to know until they try and do something. Somebody could be listening to your email or reading your emails and listening to your voicemail now, but you’re not going to know until somebody sends out the WikiLeaks thing and it’s, “Hey, here’s Doug’s email for the last three years,” kind of thing.

Unless they’re making it very obvious, then you’ll have no idea. If it’s an ex-boyfriend or whatever, you’ll have no idea until he shows up at the supermarket because he’s put a GPS tracking device on your car kind of thing.

Cade Courtley: There’s certain environments where you should just live by the assume I am being hacked. When I was doing independent security stuff in Israel, we were being monitored and hacked the whole time. It turned into a little game. We would come back from doing a move, and the laptop was rotated 20 degrees to the left. I mean, they were physically in our living quarters. There are certain environments where just assume everything you’re saying and everything you’re doing is being monitored. Then, you be careful with what you say and do.

Doug Hill: All right. Well, we’re going to be wrapping up here in probably about 10 minutes or so, but I definitely want to talk about the home invasions and how to secure my home in a more efficient manner. The questions that we’d been getting in kind of come in two different groups. One is, what thing should I be doing to prevent people from attempting a break in? What do I do if there is a break in? I want to start with the first thing first. What are some things that people can do to make their house look like a hard target, a harder target than my neighbor?

Cade Courtley: Okay. Let’s talk about two different types of home invasions and we’ll really focus on the one, I think, that most folks are … There’s one that’s called Tiger kidnapping, and that’s basically the scenario’s, “Hey, I am the manager at a big bank and they are going to use me as a key to get in that fault, so they’re going to go ahead and basically break into my home, hold my family hostage so that I then go, because I have the special access.” That’s a whole side that is nasty. If you’re in one of those situations, you’re going to be in a lot of trouble, because these are professionals that are pre-planning everything.

The standard home invasion. The rule is a criminal will follow the path of least resistance. When I say that, if there’s two homes in front of this guy and one on the left has a camera mounted by the front door, it’s got good exterior lighting, maybe has a dog barking, they’re going to go to the one on the right that doesn’t have any of that stuff. Physical security. Start at night. Okay. Where is there not light around the perimeter? That’s an easy fix. I love the idea of having a camera and they’re making them dirt cheap, and you can get a live feed on your cellphone. Put one up at least at the front door, potentially on a corner. That can be done cheap.

If you don’t feel like spending the money on an alarm system for your home, there are a lot of very cheap alternatives that will make it a safer place. Wood dowels in the windows and the sliding glass doors. They make little indicators that if they’re separated … there’s a magnet … if it’s separated by more than half an inch, it’s an alarm. You can get a dozen of those things for under $10. Put one in every window. I mean, I’ve got four dogs. That’s a little excessive, but extremely effective. Jason, I know you’ve got a ton more ideas as far as physical security. Then, I guess we’ll get into the now what.

Jason Hanson: I think, Cade, I 100% agree with everything you said. You hit the nail right on the head. In the intelligence businesses, there’s a saying, “Casing is supreme.” You case everything. Just go case your own neighborhood. If all your neighbors’ houses have better security than you do, well, shoot, the guy’s coming to your house. If yours has better, then that’s what you want. Put a dog bowl up, even if you don’t own dogs. You don’t have to have four dogs like Cade, but you can at least put the beware of dog sign or put bowls up…

Cade Courtley: Do not get four dogs.

Jason Hanson: All that stuff. Everything Cade said, I agree with, is making it look like a … another phrase to say … is hard target. Make it uninviting. We’ve talked about, Doug, in the past, is even if you’re not going to get real cameras, get a fake camera. I’ve told you, I have a client in Salt Lake City, Utah, did not want to get real cameras on his house, bought the dummy cameras, which look identical. I think he spent $10 and bought them on Amazon. His next-door neighbor got robbed. The police and all them come over and said, “Hey, we need to pull the security footage from your cameras to catch the robbers.” He had a good laugh and said, “Well, actually, they’re all fake,” but he didn’t get robbed.

As they’re casing, because a criminal may case for five minutes, they may case for two weeks. Most likely unless they’re casing, a celebrity or a politician, they’re not going to case for weeks at a time. It’s going to be a more five to 10 minute case because they’re bored one Friday night. If they see that camera, they’re not going to know if it’s real or not. They’re obviously not the brightest bulbs, so they’ll choose something else. Just make it very uninviting.

Doug Hill: I got two questions about houses that have large windows, and which is kind of surprising because they’re very, very specific about, “I have 13 large windows that are picturesque, looking out over the horizon. How do I protect those? Anyone with an ax, or anyone that …”

Cade Courtley: You know, that’s the price of beauty. I’m sorry. I bet it’s a beautiful house. It probably has an amazing view. You’ve decided to sacrifice a certain sense of security for that convenience and luxury. I mean, you can put indicators in the corners of windows. If it shatters, it will sound an alarm. You can do something like that. If somebody’s going to put an ax through your window, they’re going to do it.

Jason Hanson: Yeah, I agree. Cade mentioned the glass break detectors. I’d absolutely have those. Then you need to have a really … I don’t know if this is a question you’re going to ask in a minute, a really good home defense plan.

Doug Hill: Yes. Let’s go right into that.

Jason Hanson: We’ll go right in, because the average person, if they’ve got doors and all that stuff, you’re going to have to kick in the door, you’re going to have to cause a problem. If I just have to break that window, I’m going to be in quicker. I’d like to hear what Cade says on this, but I’ll share my personal home defense plan for my family, very simple as all plans should be, because in that situation when your heart is pumping, your IQ drops a little bit, and you don’t need to make it complicated.

I’m a gun guy. My wife has a gun on her side of the bed. I have a gun on my side of the bed. They are in quick opening safes, meaning we can open these safes in literally less than three seconds. I’ve got three young kids, so every gun in my house is locked up. If a home intruder comes in and we hear that door get kicked in and there is no time to react, I open my safe, grab my gun, I got my flashlight. I’m going to the top of the stairs. My wife is running in to the kid’s side of the bedroom to block off all that area. I’m waiting at the top of the stairs, which is a choke point. If Mr. Bad guy decides to come up, I’ll do what’s necessary to stop him.

Now, that’s a, what I call, whatever name you want to … a rapid home invasion. That’s very quickly happening. If we have more time, then we’ll all get into one room. We’ll barricade. I’ll sit there with a gun pointed at the door. If you’re stupid enough come to come through that door, I’ll use it. I think you’ve got a plan for both scenarios, and you’ve got a plan to happen in less than 10 seconds. I know that in less than 10 seconds, I can be at the top of the stairs with my gun and my flashlight. My wife can already be over where she wants to be with the kids.

A lot of people don’t have home defense plans. When that door is getting kicked in at 3 AM, that’s not the time to sit up in the bed and say, “What do we do now?”

Cade Courtley: Yeah, I mean rock solid. It’s great. I wish more people do that, Jason. It’s going to be slightly different whether you have kids or don’t have kids, whether your kids are very young or they’re at an age where they should understand … I would say, you yell a code word out, whatever that code word is and those kids understand, “This means we’ve got to run to this room right now.”

Traditionally, the number one goal will be to get out of the house. Let’s go. If that’s the case, make sure you have multiple exit routes, one on each side of the house. I like the idea of having a multiple weapons system. In addition to one within arm’s reach of my bed, there is one over by this exit. There’s one over by this exit. Maybe there’s one in this closet. They’re located in several areas of the house. If you can’t get to one area, you’ve got an option and another one.

I like the idea of maybe you’re going to have to stay behind and what do the kids do if they’re on their own, leaving the house. Which neighbor do they go to? What do they tell that neighbor? They kind of have to have, “Okay, you’re on your own. You heard this code word. That means we’re on our own. We’re heading out.” Then, make this something that you rehearse with the family, but don’t make it a scary thing. Try and take a couple of hours on a Saturday and be like, “Okay guys. There’s a fire downstairs, and you hear this word, this is what you’re going to do.” They get it, because if you rehearse it, you’ll know what to do when it happens instead of, “We kind of had the plan, but …” Then, I guess that kind of wraps it up.

Doug Hill: We’ve got some other questions… I have a weapon somewhere in our house, but if we’re in a different part of the room, because it doesn’t happen at night, or of a different part of the house, because it doesn’t happen at night when we expect it to, what do we do? How many different places should people have weapons? How do they secure them if they have kids and things like that? Any advice that you have on that would be great.

Jason Hanson: I absolutely think you should have a gun on every level of the house. That’s what we do. Because, what if you’re sitting in your basement watching TV, bad guy breaks in and your gun is in the master bedroom. That’s a long way to go to get to the gun. That’s what we do.

Rapid access safes. We live in awesome technological age. You can just go online. There are all these different safes that you can open in just seconds. As I said, since I have kids, every gun is locked up in one of these safes. They can’t access them. Then, if you don’t like guns, have knives. I mean, you could put knives all over the house, too. You’ve got knives in the kitchen you can grab to defend yourself and stop an intruder. Absolutely have at least something on every level of the house.

Cade Courtley: Just to add to that real quick. I get this question all time as far as do I use a handgun or a firearm for home defense. I ask these three questions. Number one, are you willing to train and be good and be proficient with it? That means, at least monthly, but maybe weekly. Number two, if you have kids in the house, are you going to be able to safely store it? Then, number three is kind of the big one. If you find yourself in a position where you have to use that, are you going to be willing to use it? Because nothing would be worse than to be shot with your own gun.

Doug Hill: Right. I think I’m going to wrap up right around here. I want to give you guys both an opportunity for any final thoughts that you might have for any of our readers today, things that we may not have covered on any questions. I want to start with you, Jason. What thoughts do you have for our readers? What can they look forward to in the coming months for Spy & Survival Briefing?

Jason Hanson: My final thought is just prepare. It gives you such a piece of mind, whether it’s the food storage, the water storage, the gun in the house. A lot of people, it may sound overwhelming, but just do it step by step. It’s the old how to eat an elephant joke, one bite at a time. I have peace of mind. Not that I want the world to end, not that I want a blackout to occur, but if it does, I know that it’s not going to be the end of the world for my family, because we have taken so many different steps. That’s what I’d encourage everybody to do is just start preparing. Use checklists. I’m a very organized person. Once a year, we go back through our food storage and say, “Hey what did we eat? What do we need to start building up again?” That kind of stuff.

Then to look forward to is I think two of the largest threats we face are the blackout we mentioned, and still the economic collapse. I mean, Obama added … I think … 80% increase to the debt, trillions of dollars. It’s not going to be wiped out overnight. We’re still a ticking time bomb. It may be next year, five years, we could all be long dead, nobody knows that, but it’s going to happen. It’s going to be that day of reckoning.

Going forward, we are really going to get in depth on talking about blackout survival, a lot of stuff that we didn’t have time today, and also how to survive that economic collapse in details that we’ve never gone into before. Those are two of the big things, in addition to of course cyber security, but I don’t want to give everything right now because I don’t have time.

Doug Hill: Cade?

Cade Courtley: I would just simply add to the fact that in the world that we’re living in, please say to yourself, “When it happens, I’ll be prepared,” instead of, “It’s not going to happen to me.” When this happens, I’ll be prepared. I’ll stress one more time, situational awareness, it’s so easy to practice. Put your phone in your pocket and look around, and you’d be amazed what you start picking up on.

As far as the future, I’m looking forward to continuing contributions to Spy & Survival, really talking about out-of-the-box thinking and tactics and techniques that I use that kept me alive in the past and what I used to do, and to share those with folks. Hopefully, they’ll have the same results.

Doug Hill: That’s awesome. Thank you guys for joining us today and sharing all your thoughts on that. It’s really, really good to see you personally, but also for our readers. I know they’re going to appreciate it. Going forward, if you guys have questions … I’m talking to the readers now … for Jason or Cade, write this email down. You can always send questions in that you’d like us to cover in upcoming issues or other events like this spy@LFB.org. We will respond to your emails, and we will update our contribution list as we go forward and touch on those topics. Thank you all for tuning in. We’ll see you next time.