Survival:Beyond the Bug-Out Bag
We all agree that being prepared for an emergency is important. That's why preparing a "Bug Out Bag" that will allow you can grab and go can be a lifesaver. So I began posting information here over 6 years ago, and I'm updating that information regularly. I've also gone beyond the traditional products. Because creating "the bag" is just the first step to being prepared, not the final product. We now know we each need to have at least 30 days of essential supplies like food water and medicine. We must be our own first responders.
I cover topics like:
*Products I both use and trust.
*Often forgotten items you need to have in your bag.
*Psychological and Emotional planning for the family
*Planning for Kids and Seniors
*What to do when Plan "A" fails?
This includes a curated list of links from a variety of sources too. I'll be sharing and updating links to sites I buy from and products I use. So we are clear, I have no sponsors, so the opinions, both good and bad, are my own.
Join me as I begin the 7th year/6th season of productions in an ongoing series of podcasts for you and your family to use and to share with others as you build a community. Is this fun or what?
Survival:Beyond the Bug-Out Bag
Ghost Subscriptions& Home Security: A Guide to Protecting Yourself
Ever found yourself scratching your head over a mysterious charge on your bank statement? You're not alone. This week, I'm pulling back the curtain on the aggravating world of ghost subscriptions, revealing how I outmaneuvered the silent siphoning of funds by old services. From scrutinizing bank statements to documenting communications, I lay out the strategic playbook you need to reclaim control over your finances. But it's not all defense; we switch gears to discuss the offense of home security, dissecting the merits of video coverage versus surveillance systems—inspired by the peace of mind my Simply Safe setup delivers. I'll walk you through the cost-benefit analysis, the integration with emergency services, and how these systems can be a homeowner's best friend as the days get longer and the weather warms up.
Change is in the air, and I'm thrilled to hint at our new direction—including a possible venture into video to strengthen our community ties. As we adapt our schedule in preparation for exciting developments, I want to leave you with a thought: how prepared are you for the summer season when it comes to safeguarding your home? From the importance of motion detection to the subtleties of choosing the right security system, there's a wealth of knowledge to absorb. Please stay vigilant and cultivate that perfect blend of security and comfort for your living space. Catch all these insights and more, from Refuse to Be aVictim PersonalProptrecton Training.
SimpliSafe Home Security Systems
Security Cameras- Self-Monitoring Suggestions
Class Information: Refuse to be a Victim Personal ProtectionTraining
For questions and comments, email me at: profprepper@protonmail.com
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Copyright: Refuse to be a Victim Personal Protection Training 2018-2024
Well, if you're a fan of the Ghostbusters series, you know what the refrain is I ain't afraid of no ghost. Well, I'm not afraid of a ghost, but I am afraid of ghost subscriptions. Yeah, it's gotten so bad. My bank's fraud unit has gotten involved. More on that. We'll have an overview of video cameras. I promised we'd talk about that. What's the difference between a video system and video surveillance system? Hmm, lots to learn and we'll take a look at some upcoming classes. All that and the usual zaniness. Come on in, let's get started. Why, everybody? I'm Bill Bateman, part of the team here. It refused to be a victim. Personal protection, training. We are located say it with me people in the Medford White City area of Southern Oregon, 6800 Kershaw Boulevard, and it is where Kershaw meets Corey. Out there in the White City area, the old camp White Range. It's a historical landmark and it's a whole lot of fun. Well, I promised I'd talk to you first about ghost subscriptions.
Speaker 1:Last week I was telling you about a problem of subscriptions that simply would not die. I have a Zipcar subscription. About 7 years ago, right about the time, I moved from California to Oregon and started working at Southern Oregon University. Well, that no longer is used. Things changed, didn't need it, but just this year, when I was getting my tax information together, I noticed that my bank account was being deported for about $140 in subscriptions and fees to renew this old subscription. Well, I couldn't get into it because the email address has changed. I have retired from the university. As such, that email address has been required. I've sent a number of emails. I had a number of phone conversations. What did I get? This month? Again, that's right, another reversal of my reversal charges. Well, I've tried being nice. I called them for the last time and I was very polite. I even had a witness so nobody could say I was rude or hard to deal with. But we'll get right back to you. We'll get back to you. That was a week and a half ago a week ago, let's be accurate but I finally have lost my patience and I referred it to the Chase Bank Fraud Unit.
Speaker 1:Now, to make it a little more interesting, I also used a service called Survey Monkey. We were doing those little surveys. We click a button and thank you. Yes, I like this, I don't like that. We were doing that for our customer service. Again, several years ago. This one I forgot to cancel. That's on me. Called them up, talked to them. I was in a situation within 24 hours of finding the charge and they were very professional, very nice and said, boom, we'll take care of it. And that was good until this month went. That's right. The zombie charges were back again.
Speaker 1:The message from here A be careful who you do business with and. B be very careful with your bank and checking information. It's very easy, if I wasn't so diligent, for those charges to go through. Now these are bigger numbers. It's even littler numbers that slip by unnoticed. In fact, that's a tactic and I'm not saying either of these companies were doing that, but it is a common tactic to run a $5 through charge, $5 charge through your system and say subscription. Well, you may or you may not catch that. Now when you see $192 or $165, you're going to go. What the heck is that? Go, be vigilant on your bank accounts. Be extra careful on your subscriptions and don't make them work harder to help you. If you don't need a service, be sure to cancel it. Be sure to honor the cancellation policies and be sure to communicate clearly, effectively and keep copies of everything.
Speaker 1:I uploaded like 7 megabytes of email that I had sent to help support my claim. So it's not just some old guy yelling on the telephone. Never do that, Never be a telephone screamer. Doesn't help you, doesn't help you at all. So yeah, if you got a problem, document, document, polite, courteous, escalate if you have to. I have not had any escalation. I've had it promised. I haven't seen it happen. I have let them know that this is the last time they'll be hearing from me. Next time I'll be having my attorney call them and it's going to get expensive. You can't keep snagging my money without permission, people. It's just not how we do it. So keep an eye on your accounts. That's item number one. Zombie accounts are out there, ghost subscriptions. I am afraid of those.
Speaker 1:Let's take a look at video cameras. We talked about this last time and there is video coverage and there's video surveillance. And the difference of surveillance system is monitored. Now, full disclosure. I have a home installed, a self-installed system called Simply Safe. It has the little sensors on the windows. It has motion sensors if somebody gets in your room, and it has a panic button and it has. I choose not to, but it will support a camera system and it has monitoring. There's two levels of monitoring. If the alarm goes off, they'll call the police. The second level of monitoring, which is about twice the cost I want to say one is like $20, so the other one is about $40 per month. They'll have cameras that come on, they'll talk to the burglars or people in the house and they'll also let the police know. Yep, I'm looking inside Bill's house in Baygali. That's not Bill and there's somebody trying to get into his big stash of jelly beans. So, depending on what you want to spend now, this thing cost me $19 a month in monitoring fees and the whole system, and this based on square footage and the number of windows. You have ran me about $300.
Speaker 1:But before that, before I got real serious about this, and partially now that I have more things to keep track of, I'd like to have better security. Things are getting a little strange out there. I did have a remote video camera in my home and it was really. It looked like R2D2. It was a little tiny thing sat on the kitchen table. Had a camera would do a lot of the things they should do, like night vision. They would monitor and follow motion. The weirdest thing you've ever seen to walk into your front room and have this little camera, come on, click and start whirring and following you around. Now, this thing ran me like I want to say $60 and it would not call the police. It would call me on my cell phone. What it would also do and this is a feature I think that is very valuable it would send that video both to a little video card, like you put in your camera on the unit. Well, that's handy, but it's not because you can just reach up, take that thing out. There goes all the video. So it also had cloud storage. It had a three, I think three gigabytes of cloud storage, which is plenty enough to take care of a break-in. And it had also a good, sharp camera.
Speaker 1:So let's look at the things that are important for cameras. Well, if you want full monitoring, there are professionals, companies that will do it. They have a set fee. There are home do-it-yourself systems like the one I chose to use. Now, I'm kind of techy, but it really wasn't that hard and it took me about an afternoon to set up. There was no medication, there was no crying. It worked out really pretty, pretty well.
Speaker 1:And then there are the do-it-yourself home self-reporting systems. You can actually go on Amazon and enter home security systems wireless and find things that start around 25 or 30 dollars. Well, okay, yeah, you may not want to get the lowest rated pop quiz class. How do we judge a system? We look at the specs, we look at the features and we look at the reviews. Yes, on any product made, you're gonna have somebody whining because it doesn't come in blue and give it one star. If you've got 1500 reviews and 1497 are pretty good, that tells you that you're looking in the right direction. So, for an indoor or for an outdoor system and outdoor systems do have a few more requirements, but only because they are outdoors you can do it yourself between $100 and $200 or connect it to a self-monitored system for under $300.
Speaker 1:Now, this doesn't in fact, include the doorbell camera, because the doorbell camera is something kind of different. They're going to record video, they are going to have cloud storage, but they have to go into your existing doorbell system. This is going to require some wiring you might want to talk to. I am not an electrician. One of our team is. He knows all things about electricity and he's the guy you want to talk to. He knows what has to happen because of power and because of connecting it to existing in-home wiring. In fact, I'm a firm believer. Anytime you need anything done with an electrical system or any modification to the home structure, you may be this, you know, you may be really, really good. I'd like to let a pro do it. Only for the liability aspect. If you burn down the back end of the house and you're standing there with a screwdriver and some electrical tape in your hand, that's going to be a really tough call to the insurance company. I'm just saying Now, if you're an electrician, god bless. I mean, go big.
Speaker 1:So let's look at the features that we're looking for in cameras. First of all, a doorbell camera. The resolution of the camera the sharper the resolution, the better it's going to be for identifying hazards, identifying what's going on. Also, night vision You'll notice those little things that look like little mini, mini lights around cameras. Those allow them to see at night. They take existing light and magnify it. Field of view how wide can you see? You don't want just like a keyhole where you could peek out a little hole in your front door. You want like the garden hose that sprays wide to left, to right, above and below, to see what's out there.
Speaker 1:Motion detection and this is actually almost a checklist for everybody Is that a dog? Is that a possum? Is that a little kid? Is that somebody hunkered down pretending to be a little kid? These are important things. The source of power Is it hardwired into your home? Now, generally you're going to see doorbell cameras are they don't have to be. And again, if you're not getting into hard wiring, if you're just going with a video feed to your computer screen, okay, that'll work. Audio doesn't have an audio feature and, related to that, cloud storage and some will work with your, for example, alexis, the various home systems. So these are things that are very, very, very useful.
Speaker 1:Motion detection alert Is it alerting on an empty house? Is it alerting? Is it calling your cell? Is it calling a call center? This is where your cost is going to get there, but really, I think 35 a month for live monitoring. That's not really bad. That's what I'm paying. Check other systems, check guarantees when is this call center? What is the history of this company you're dealing with? Like any other service, the reputation of the company is going to be really, really important. Let's see what else is important. Motion detection we talked about. If you're going outside, does it have a light Think many of these systems come like an external patio light might be and in the center is the camera. This gives you full night vision. You don't have to worry about picking up existing light. You're going to have light provided to you and, I think, for almost anything. Cloud vision is important because or cloud storage, because this information is going to be used later to deal with criminal prosecution and you should be able to clearly identify what this is for.
Speaker 1:I talked last time about getting ready for summer and knowing who's in your yard and knowing if you're sitting there, and I saw this in a magazine and I can't remember that or I would tell you where I read this. I think it was in the Concealed Carry Magazine and they told a story about a couple who lived out in a fairly rural area and they were sitting there on their sofa and somebody tried to come in through the screen door and there was a confrontation and police were called, shots were fired. It was a very serious, a very frightening situation. It ended well for our homeowner, but they kind of got in some trouble because, it was pointed out, this bad guy came through your gate, which was a goodly distance from the home. You didn't know it came all the way across your yard. You didn't know it looked in all your windows. It was double jeopardy how are you supposed to know? And were able to just start yanking your screen door open to come on in.
Speaker 1:These are some areas that you and I, as preppers, as people who are concerned about our home and our family and our situational awareness, as we've been talking about, these are things we should know. If somebody comes in our front gate, you don't have to set off a flare and a marching band, but there should be a ding, dong and maybe something pop up on your computer screen. Lights in the yard. My yard is lighted. My yard has motion sensors in it, not because I'm afraid of ninjas coming to get me I'll never hear them anyway but I am concerned. Some of the neighbor kids are pretty squirrely. We've had an occasional unhoused person show up here in the area and try to see if you're really serious about not using that lawn furniture you had on the back patio.
Speaker 1:Knowing what's outside your home is your responsibility and protecting it is your responsibility. The front door, when we moved in there was just your basic screen door. Well, we got rid of that second thing we did. We made sure that it was a solid metal door, like a storm door that you could open and get ventilation, but it locked. Now is it a blast door? Is it a security door? No, but it's metal and you're not just going to yank it off the hinges. You're going to have to work at it and that's going to give us some time.
Speaker 1:So, looking at your home as we start getting ready for 2024, for this season, it's going to be hot, windows are going to be open or your cooling system is going to be running and that's noisy Not super noisy, but it's a background noise that you get used to. Would you know if somebody entered your yard? Would you know if somebody was out in your yard? Have you looked out your windows? Looking at your existing lighting system, would you know if there was somebody moving around? I have my lights set, so if there's someone moving between the lights and the house, those lights are going to go off and on. I'm going to be able, without even seeing the individual, to be able to monitor motion in my yard. Now, this does not mean you should be running around on full alert all the time. It does mean you should be giving yourself full advantage for your home court defense, home court advantage.
Speaker 1:What is your plan? We've talked about this before, part of the planning process. In an emergency, if somebody comes to the door and it's the sheriff, bang, bang, bang, we got an emergency, you gotta go. I have it set so people can find my front door. I've got my hose coiled up, my rakes and tools A. I don't leave tools out where somebody can get them and use them to get into the house. I also don't want somebody, especially an emergency worker, if I have to call an ambulance and paramedics are coming up my front walk and the rakes out there and they fall over that and get hurt or, worse, do a chevy chase and smack themselves upside the head. It's funny on tv but if you've ever done it in real life, not so funny. So we're going to be gardening, we're going to be out in the yard. Let's keep our walkways clear. Let's keep our hose rolled up If you're trying to get out of the house in an emergency, if you get tangled up in the yard furniture, no, all of these things are things to think about now. Season is just starting. Look at, do you want an external light Look at. Do you want just a simple alert? Video screen pops up. Do you want a more advanced system? What will your budget stand? What will you stand?
Speaker 1:I have had people I used to prior to getting married. I had a cleaning person who'd come in lovely lady. But she came to me and she said, bill, I'd be happy. You know, this is how much I charge. I don't do windows the usual thing. And she said also I won't work in a home with a security camera. If you don't trust me enough, if you think I have to be on camera, I'm not the person for you. Well, she worked for me for a number of years. I give her the highest reference. She's excellent and never had a minute's trouble. And I did have a home security camera, the little R2D2 unit. I called it and I'd unplug it when she was there. She explained she didn't want people to see her dancing. Well, she worked and that was good enough for me.
Speaker 1:Two final points when you're talking about home security and alarm system, specifically Insurance benefits and is a permit required. My insurance company gives me a 10% discount for a monitored alarm system that's not too shabby, and also both places I've lived do require you to notify the police department if you are using a home security system. Some areas they're not that worried about it. Other areas, you must get a license and that can be $15 or $20 for a home system, up to $120 for a professionally installed system. And there is a fee in some areas, although not all, for false alarms. So keep that in mind when you're looking at a home security system. If it's not monitored, it's not an issue, and when I just have my little R2 unit, I just get a call on my cell phone and deal with it from there. Hopefully these are some ideas. You can go from 20 or 30 to 100 to 120 is about the sweet spot. And then when you start buying more sophisticated systems 200 to 350, depending upon the size of the property you're protecting Internal and external cameras.
Speaker 1:Also, consider how much Wi-Fi. If you're going to go wireless and almost all the things I have are wireless what kind of plan you're going to have to have. If you have bad Wi-Fi, you're not going to be happy. You should deal with your Wi-Fi before you deal with the camera. I find that I use between 45 and 90 gigabytes a month at maximum. When I had a big camera system that I tried out for a short term and generally about half of that for the occasional alert or a simple monitoring system. Check with the company on the product you're going to buy and run those nifty download and speed tests. On the internet you can get and check your system out. Wi-fi costs are going up and, yes, indeed that's no surprise. The government also discontinued that wonderful stipend we senior citizens got for Wi-Fi and not real pleased about that. That's going to kick my bill up $30 a month. Hey, thank you. Thank you, washington. Just another example of the great job you're all doing.
Speaker 1:Finally, as we head into it, it's time now, with the weather changing the weather nicer, it's a great time to think about getting some lessons. We are in the month of March, which means the April concealed carry class. We do have some room in that, don't miss out. It filled up. Last month. Some people were sad. The way not to be sad subscribe right now, grab it today, or we always will, are willing to do a private lesson and, yes, a private lesson is more expensive than the class we're offering the second Saturday of the month.
Speaker 1:With that said, we'd like to invite you to the website to check it out, see what's going on. I'd like to also invite you to share this podcast. We're trying to build our listenership, so subscribe, download it, talk it up to your friends and if there's things we can talk about that are interest to you that I'm not hitting, or you'd like more information on something, for heaven's sakes, use that email address on the front of the first page and give us a shout. I'll put a few links up. I'll put simply safe up only because it's something I use, not because they're a sponsor, although I wouldn't mind if they want it to be and a couple of the camera systems I have tried and had pretty good luck with. You would want to, of course, see if it's going to fit with, like your system, your wi-fi setup and your lifestyle. You do.
Speaker 1:We have had a couple of occasions when the I, when I was dating one of my dates, woke up in the middle of the night, wanted to go out to the car and get something. She wasn't going to wake me up and she got up and, oh boy, the alarms went off. Lights came on. Scared the socks offer. Well, scared flip flops offer. And it's not the way you want to start a relationship. So if you've got a lot of kids, if you've got a lot of pets, pets and motion sensors or an issue, do your research check it out.
Speaker 1:Okay, that's all I got for this week. I hope to see you again next time. We are going to be going to a more modified schedule. I got some things going on. I'll tell you about that next time and I'll tell you what to expect in the weeks to come. We are still I'm threatening to go to video by May. We'll see if it happens, but that's what I want to do either way. We hope to see you next week back here at the ranch. For another issue of survival beyond the bug out back or out at the park or, hey, maybe just out on the street to say howdy, be safe out there. The preceding program was a presentation of retired guy productions.
