Welcome back to the Two Promises podcast. Let's dive right into another exciting adventure with BD and crew as he pursues his new passion of one day finding the most epic bourbon. The Two Promises teams send their special thanks to Hobie and the Huckleberries for their masterful theme music. So grab a glass, relax, and enjoy responsibly.
I'm if I don't stop drinking wine So I switched to whiskey and I'm feeling fine Drinking that smoke smoke whiskey No more wine Street burger, oh baby you try the ride Welcome back to the show everyone. Super excited to have a very special guest. He is a Navy SEAL brother who has had a career extensively in the Seer realm. He's done a lot of other great stuff for the community, instructing, leading, and with Seer, for those of you who do not know, that's survival, evasion, resistance, and escape.
We're gonna let him go into the weeds and the details on that. We're excited to have him on the show. And then after all of the great work he did for our country in the SEAL teams, he transitioned and he has been the star of a Discovery Channel show called Man Hunt. It's a reality TV show and we're excited to hear from him on what a lot of the details of that is. Mr. Joel Lambert, welcome to the show. Thank you sir for having me on, appreciate it. Nice to have another brother interviewing me.
Thank you. Yeah, so I've been following you for a while. I've seen your book coming out. I was super excited to jump on the opportunity to buy a copy and get it. And man, thumbing through it, it is extremely, extremely detailed, very thorough. It leaves absolutely nothing to chance, to guesswork. I mean, down to the calorie count of the food you recommend, it's all in here. very proud of it. Thank you.
Yeah. It's kind of the culmination of all the things, know, seal teams and then into mana where it just, like you mentioned, narrowed off into just solely really seer, escape and evasion.
And then kind of translating that into the book and distilling all the knowledge and really strategy, because it's all mindset, you know, it's strategic and tactical thinking and having the tools in your toolbox to be able to select and make strategic choices and build a complete, just resilient safe place for you and your family. So it's kind of the culmination of my whole career and I'm pretty proud of it. That is super awesome. That is a big focus that we have here is preparedness, security.
We're having another security expert seal on a lot of the physical protection and things like that. So this is going to be an excellent compliment to what we have in store for the listeners. guess moving forward, let's take a step way back. And if you wouldn't mind telling us about your career in the seal teams and how that set you up for what you've got going on now. Sure, well, I went to Bud's a little later.
I was in my early 20s when I decided to finally join the Navy and go solely for the SEAL team. I didn't want to be in the Navy. I wanted to be a SEAL and more specifically see if I could do it or not. Test myself, know, the very nugget, the core of your soul. And so I started class 220 and I went through hell week with 220 and got double ruled for stress fractures in both of my femurs because we were a spring class. So lots of running, lots of boats and logs and all that stuff.
And so I then came back and finished with class 222 and then went to of course jump school and then out to the East coast and did SQT at the time out there or STT rather. I STT at the time. I'm SEAL tactical training and then did a platoon at SEAL team two and the force 21 came along and I got moved over to SEAL team four. with a bunch of guys from my platoon. And then we deployed to Afghanistan. That was in early 2002. That was a pretty rough deployment. Awesome though.
And then when I got back, I ended up taking shore duty out at Bud's and I was at Naval Special Warfare Center for three and a half years. And then I got out and I went up, started working in Hollywood. Step right up into that and started consulting on a bunch of stuff and you know, kind of working behind the camera, consulting and developing stuff. And one of my close friends that I met right when I got up there was a guy named James Jacks.
You may know him as the producer of Tombstone, The Mummy, The Gift, The Game. I mean, this guy that every movie in, he $2 billion worth of box office in the eighties and nineties for action movies. And so just an awesome dude. And, you know, I was kind of not really sure about Hollywood. And then I meet Jim. And at Jim's parties, I'm meeting Billy Bob Thornton and Michael Bean and all these people that started in his movies and Brendan Fraser.
But the people I was meeting through Jim and Jim himself were just super cool. Jim's dad was a colonel in the army who was an artillery officer in World War II and he was on Omaha Beach plus D-Day plus 48 minutes. Jim had his Omaha Beach map, his actual map, briefing map. from the day of the invasion framed up on his wall. So he was really patriotic and had a strong tie to the military. And so I started working with him and he was developing some scripts about seals in Afghanistan.
And this was 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008. Nobody was ready for movies or anything about the war. Things were really nasty in Iraq. Nobody wanted to make movies yet. But I worked with him and got to meet a bunch of amazing people and go to a bunch of parties and kind of get connected in and through some really great people. And so then I started working in the industry because there were great people. then of course, working in the industry, I found out how rotten most of the other people are.
And then, you know, went on in my own career from there. So that's a much more exhaustive answer. And that is so awesome though, because I mean, those are some of my cinematography like heroes, if you will. I Tombstone incredible film. A lot of the other films that you mentioned just epic. In fact, on my sixth deployment, used a, um like a logo, our platoon logo was kind of uh the face of Doc Holliday. Awesome.
Yeah. So, and we also made a five gallon run of a bourbon that I'm hope to push out eventually. to market, he was a huge inspiration for what our platoon kind of core was. I love that movie and Jim tells stories about it all the time. And my last memory of Jim was in December. It was Christmas time and Jim would always, if he didn't have a date to any of these cool parties, he'd always put me down as a plus one.
So I go to the Christmas party with Jim, the Universal Christmas party, like their main, the other one for office workers and stuff. This is like their tier one for the execs and all the A-list actors and stuff. The Universal Christmas party, the Chateau Marmont in Hollywood. And I go with Jim. And we get a beer at the bar and we're turning to look around and there's like everybody, Chris Pine, just everybody just milling around in this circle.
And then Powers Booth, Curly Bill Brocious comes walking up to Jim and he's like, Hey Jim, hadn't seen each other in forever. So they start slapping hands. We go, he gets a drink. It's me, Jim Jacks and Powers Booth, Curly Bill Brocious. We go and sit down at a little table in the dark corner. And I just sip on a whiskey and listen to Powers Booth and Jim swap tombstones. stories, like behind the scenes, tombstone stories, just for an hour was amazing.
And like three weeks later, Jim died of a heart attack. But that was my last, last time I saw Jim. It was a good finish. Yeah, what a great tribute to him and all of his legacy. Thank you for sharing that. So we're getting into the Hollywood thing. I'm super excited about it. I kind of dabbled in that myself as I was transitioning out. However, I'm kind of curious if you could share with our listeners a little bit about the depth of your experience and the seer schools that you went through.
So you didn't just do the basic seer school that every seal does. You went way above and beyond that and dove like in head first. Yeah. So I went to Seer because you know what it's like in your first, at least my first platoon. And you know, you're just kind of there shoving you wherever, know, they just check all the blocks and then if stuff pops up, they just send two or three guys.
So two or three guys from my first platoon and I went to the original Seer, like the basic Seer in Maine, I believe it was. And it was a winter Seer class in Maine. And that was basic Seer, crazy experience. I mean, I had a lot of negative experience. There were some really funny stories, but. It was, you know, the most incredibly immersive. mean, they, they build this scenario out so well and so completely.
You go through and I was really fascinated with cause it's all the survival, know, all the survival, all the primitive skills, all the tracking, all the booby trap, all the John Rambo stuff, all that stuff was really intriguing to me. And this is a lot of what I thought more of the SEAL teams would be like, you know, when before I joined, you know, kind of our imaginary. what it's going to be, the brochure was kind of like a lot more John Rambo, Sear type stuff.
And even though it sucked, I was really fascinated by all the survival, all the tracking, the booby traps, the psychological games, and then the capture and the resistance and all the psychological games that went on there. And it was just this immersive crazy, it just kind of lit me on fire. So I was like, this is really cool. And it's kind of masochistic because really being, having a bunch of Sear schools doesn't do anything for you. in the Navy at all.
It just was something that I really dug. And so then I went to Desert Seer and the West Coast and learned all the desert specific stuff. And I just got turned off by this stuff. And so then when I'm out and I'm in LA now, I'm in Hollywood and I'm working with GM and I'm doing a lot of, you know, weapons consultation, consultations on scripts and, and military advising on certain things. And I'm doing a little bit in front of the camera, but not very much. I'm doing a lot behind the camera.
And then a friend of a friend. reached out to me in a veterans group in LA. And he said that he had a friend who was developing a television show, which everybody in Hollywood, you've done a little, everybody's got something, know, it's, you know, developing a television show. Sure. You're a waiter and you had an idea when you're taking a shit one day, you know, I'm that's about it could be at that level or it could be, you know, something that's about to get purchased by a major network.
You have no idea. But he said this guy was looking, he had an idea for show. He was developing a television show and he was looking for former special operations personnel. with a strong background in tracking and escape and evasion. And I had that. And of course, you know, had a career in the SEAL teams. And so this was a friend of a friend. And so whatever I sent him my resume. And then the guy calls me up super excited. Turns out this guy's a former Green Brave.
Super excited chatting with him. And he's like, can you fill out your resume? Can you go through your schools? Can you send me some tape on you? you, know, send me some, so I've sent him some stuff and he's like, he loves it. It's fantastic. I have it. I do it. I filmed myself asking some questions for Whoever his partner's, don't know. I'm not paying attention to whatever BS I think this guy's got going on as far as whatever show fantasy he has in his mind of what he's creating.
But I send him stuff and do a little video interview with him for whoever this is that he's working for. And then he calls me up a couple of weeks go by and he's like, Hey, can you come out to the Palm desert with me and shoot some, and I want to get some tape on you. And I said, actually I can't. I've already done enough. I've sent you so much stuff. I've done some video interviews for you. You know, I've kind of helped you develop this thing and I just got other things to do.
I think he said, well, I'll pay you. I'm like, I think it was only like three or 400 bucks, but I'm like, okay, I can get out of LA. I've got no money at the time. I'll make a few bills. He'll put me up in a hotel. I'll go run around the desert and shoot his crappy little, whatever he wants to shoot sizzle reel with his buddy and their super eight camera on their iPhone or whatever they're going to do. And then the next day I'll go climbing and Joshua tree. Cool. All right. It's great weekend.
get out of LA. And my weekend is covered. I'm like, all right, I'll go do that. So I'm driving out to the Palm desert, Palm Springs, you know, 29 Palms area. And I'm driving out and I, I assuming, you know, they're going to put me up at some crappy little super eight, which is fine. You know, I've got some climbing gear. I've got my shit. And he also told me to prepare some booby traps to demonstrate. I don't prepare anything. Like I'm done working without any pay.
Um, so I drive out, I'm assuming I'm going to be on like a super eight and I, I'm following the directions, you know, I've got map quest out and I'm driving down this long driveway. And there's palm trees. I'm like, wow, this is pretty nice. And I drive up, pull up this big circular driveway where there's like Maseratis and Benzes and Ferraris lined up. This is beautiful resort, Palm Springs. I'm like, wow, guys are really springing for this.
So I go check into the hotel and I get some materials they give me and I go to my room and sit down and the phone rings. I'm like, hello? And it's this female. She's like, Mr. Lambert, I know you're not scheduled to work till tomorrow. But the vice president of Discovery International, Sarah Davies, just flew in from London and she's wondering if you'll have dinner with her tonight. And at that point, the light bulb finally goes off above my head. like, oh, this is actually real.
This is something. There's something really going on here. And so then that night I go out to dinner with Sarah and she's awesome. She's a big British woman, really brash and hilarious and a little caustic. And so I drink a little too much whiskey, tell a little too many, a little... I get a little raunchy with some of my team guys' and stuff, but apparently it As you do. Yeah, as we do.
And so then the next day I go run around the desert and I'm shooting and they've got a little film crew, like a small film crew. And they had a couple other guys, had a SAS guy they flew in from Hereford that they were looking at and another dude, an American guy. And so they test us and we run around, they kind of test our knowledge, ask us certain things. They got a SAS guy there who was kind of running with, who's advising.
And he's like, so what would you do right here if you're on an escape and evasion? If you had this scenario, how would you move through these? I'm just moving through and doing what I do and talking to the camera as I'm doing it. And then they want to booby trap. I'm like, Oh shit. I didn't really do that. So I find some telephone wire in the desert.
Cause there's a bunch of blown up, you know, old buildings were running around and, and a cinder block and I make a real rudimentary trip wire and crush a Coke can. found out with the cinder block that I hung up through a doorway and they absolutely loved it because I kind of pulled it out of my ass. And so then At that point, I just knew that this was what I was going to be doing. I just had no doubt.
And so then a couple of weeks later, they called me up and said, I had got the show and I'm like, great. I knew I did. I knew it was mine. And then, you know, sometimes in life things line up perfectly. This is what's happening. And that was what this was. And so I knew that. And then, um, then we shot our first pilot episode in Arizona. It was brutal. And it was funny because we're doing the development for the show.
And so there's all these discovery channel, of course it's on discovery channel. There's all these Discovery Channel veteran sound guys and camera guys and stuff. And I'm like, you guys have never done anything this difficult. What we're going to do in escape and evasion, you guys don't have any clue. And they're all like, we've done ice road truckers and deadliest catch. This is going to be no, I'm like, you have no idea what's going to happen. And so of course they didn't.
And so we get out there and no military thing, cheating, ain't trying. So then the army's just going cheating gangbusters against us. So we're scrambling, trying to keep them from cheating and ruining the whole TV show. while still maintaining hunt and actual tracking event, uni corridor, what the show was. And then you guys are quitting like our camera guys and stuff. They're quitting. They're going to the hospital with heat stroke and dehydration. One guy quit on top of the mountain.
So they're flying people out emergency wise, the executive producers in the field with the camera, they're flying people out, sound guys from LA for emergencies to fill in. It was crazy. The second season, it had gotten around town and the word was throughout all the crew guys, camera and sound and stuff in the reality and unscripted world. The word was at all the agencies, someone's going to die doing manhunt. It's a great show and it's a good pay.
If you want to do it, it's awesome show, but someone's going to die. Someone's going to die. Yeah, that is legit and super intense. So that kind of touches on where I'd say that our experiences blend just slightly. I didn't do a lot of work at the time. There was a lot kind of going on in my life, but I did get to do some consulting for security, safety, and as a set medic. yeah.
Yeah, so we almost did a show, it got shut down due to COVID, a survival type thing, almost Robinson Caruso, Swiss Family Robinson, probably more accurate, where they brought families to do like... building their own house with what they find, like if they had gotten washed up to shore and that was eventually gonna be the house they lived in, but they wanted to incorporate sustainable projects within the build.
Yeah, so whenever you say, hey, someone is gonna die on this because of how intense it was, that speaks volumes to me in that little bit of a slice that I saw of the pie there. that is, that's so exciting. So you went from Arizona and then I was reading in your book that you also went and you did more urban stuff like throughout Europe and things like that. Would you mind sharing some of your experience in that realm?
Yeah. Well, the first season we did almost everything in different ecosystems, but in the wild. So it was places like, you know, inner Mongolia, some of the Pearl Islands off the coast of Panama, the Bistedi mountains in Poland, than border Poland and Ukraine with a lot of human trafficking and smuggling going across. So mostly in wilderness type areas. But then we designed one of them where we're going to go into South Korea and go against the South Korean.
KNP, I think is what their unit is, which is their Korean national police. It's their FBI, like HRT. It's their tier one strike slash cop military, paramilitary type. And the thing is they have so much assets. have anything money can buy. They have, but they don't have the skillsets because there's just nothing real going on for them. They just never get to do anything. So they train a lot. They do a lot of Aussie style repelling. They have really shiny patches, you know that they do fun stuff.
But as far as the groups that I would go against, I would go against like the Philippine scout Rangers that are out there, you know, in the dirt in combat, like every freaking day. And these guys just weren't, but there was on this Island where there are 5,000 security cameras all linked together, all with facial recognition passing through like a whole network of 5,000 cameras and license plate readers, just a fully dystopian electronic network.
And I get there and I had a whole bunch of plants because when I'm getting ready to do it, do an episode, I of course research where I'm going to be all the basic stuff, food, water, shelter, temperature differential, availability of water, medicinal plants, edible plants, venomous snakes, venomous bug, all the stuff I need to know for the environment I'm going to be in. And then of course the hunter force that I'm going up against, who are these guys? How do they usually work?
Who do they go against? Because I want to stay in their purview. So I want to kind of. plan my strategy around what it is that they do. But then working within that, want to beat them, but I want it to be something that's familiar to them. So every scenario would be something like, here's a poacher or here's someone, human smuggler who crosses this fence. And we see this all the time. And so then I'd bring a higher level of fugitive to what it is that they're doing.
So I want to know everything about them. What assets they use, where are they good at? Are they good at electronic stuff? Are they good at the nose to the ground, human trackers? What do they do? And then I also want plan an overall strategy. plan three or four booby traps or deception trails because deception trails are the best thing, but I plan three or four that might work based on the map that I'm looking at.
here's a convergence of two different tributaries to come together into a bigger stream. What kind of cool deception or booby trap could I do there if circumstances force me into this area?
So I have four or five things that are halfway thought out and I make sure I have access to whatever I might need to do that on the day and then when I'm actually in on the run and I come across and I'm like, oh shit, here's that place where those tributaries came together and they are, they're only about a half mile behind me and they're splitting two elements. I could do that thing.
And so then I stop and I have already three quarters of the way baked and then I could put it together really quickly because it's all real time. And then afterwards we do the whole hunt and then, you know, I'd winter or get caught. And then the next day for the next three days, we would do pickup shots because most of the time, like if I'm doing a booby trap, And my camera guy's down there. He's like, okay, tell me what you're doing. Joel. I'm like, shut up. Just say, watch that back.
You know, I'm not talking to the client or ever on the corner or whatever. I'm just doing this stuff in the real time. So then the next day we go back and I rebuild it and I tell the camera, this is what I'm doing and this is how it's going to work. know, so they have the content to put in the actual day of action hunt. You know, I really prepare by planning as much as I could and then seeing what happened. But then when we're on Jeju.
I was like, okay, the only cameras, I had all these plans, the cameras and how I can blend in and what I can do to beat the facial recognition. don't know my research and everything. I'm like, it'll. tricky. You're not gonna stand out in Asia at all. You are already I oh mean, but then you go to places like Tokyo or Beijing or Shanghai or places like that as Western as everywhere. So I'm like, I'll stand out a little bit, but no big deal. We get to Jeju Island.
This is like a honeymoon spot for South Korea. I am the only six foot white motherfucker on the entire Island. so there's no chance whatsoever of blending in. So I like do four hours or so of zipping around the city. And realizing it's just a matter of time. They've got a whole command center, like in the Apollo 13 movies, the whole walls full of TV screens, you know, and, all the banks of computer terminals. So I'm like, it's a matter of time. I'm not going to make it.
So I just, did a whole 180 change of plans and took a, there's islands based around a volcano and took a cab out and dumped my shit and ran out up onto the island and, we ran out into the volcano. So my only time I really tried to go against. The facial recognition on the cameras, was like, nope. I'm go back to what I know and what I can do best.
Yeah, I can hear you there because I've also spent some time in Korea and it might be a little bit past that time, but I know that they have been really on the cutting edge of those CCC TV networks and you couldn't drive without, you know, having like traffic cams. And apparently even while I was there driving, they would even like do the math on what your speed was between the things.
And if they noticed that you had increased and were speeding between them, even if they didn't catch you speeding then. that you can still potentially get a ticket. And after the hunt, when I saw the, cause we have cameras with all of their guys as well too. And when I saw what they were doing, what they're cutting together after the hunt, they had me when I got in that cab and they got the cab's license plate and they got the cab going through every intersection.
They knew exactly where I was the whole time until I ditched the cab. Yeah, I mean, I really enjoyed working with the Koreans. It's been one of the favorite countries that I visited. So I've got some really great experiences from there, but yes, they are on it in a lot of ways. So they're very professional, very great force to work with. I worked obviously with like the flotilla NSW side. I didn't do a lot of work with their police agencies or anything like that.
So it's really cool to see your experience there matches a lot of what I saw as well. It was awesome. The hunts we would do, dude, I would just wreck me. I mean, just full, well, very few people know what it's like, except for, you know, if you've been put on E &E after a four day, you know, just a dick-draggers oppo or something, just even in training. And then you put on E &E for even another six or 12 hours is like the most miserable thing that can ever happen to you.
So I'm doing that for like three days straight with people who actually want to hunt me, who I don't know. and who are gonna take me down hard if they can for God and country. And it was like, when I finished one, my adrenaline, dude, I was just, I couldn't even do like a 20 inch box jump. mean, my adrenals were just blown and my nervous system was just fried. It was so rough. I can imagine, that's really cool.
So one thing I haven't been highlighting on my show too much for whatever reason, but I'd like to try to swing it that way if we can. I like to incorporate humor. I like to get people laughing a little bit. Is there a story either from your military experience or for filming one of these shows that you can share that was just caught you as super funny at the time or you think it'd be really interesting for us to hear about?
Well, I was about, it's not like the super funniest story, but it's one of my favorite stories, which happened in the Pearl Islands of Panama when we were doing manhunt. So we had done the whole hunt and I had gotten away and one of the maneuvers I pulled that I was very proud of, I'd gone through this mangrove swamp and I swum out to this little island, this tiny little rock really, it was off the main island that we were doing this hunt on.
These little islands, just off the south course of Panama, little island string. So there's nothing on it, no lights, just. pitch black, dark. And I went out to this little island, I spent the night out there and I ate a snake that I caught earlier, a bull constrictor. And I made this little raft. And then when the tide was coming in the next morning, I put my stuff and my camera guy's stuff on this little raft that I put my fins on.
And I just swam this little raft up this little estuary and I was going to like 500 meters up. So basically they follow my trail until it ended in a mangrove swamp that had flooded. And then who knows where I went from there, but I'd gone out to the island and then I was swimming up a estuary. They never, never would have found me. So I'm swimming up and then I see some caiman swimming around. I'm like, okay, time to get out.
So I got out a little earlier than I expected and they picked up my trail. But so I got away the end of the hunt. We had to go back and shoot some more content on the whole island I was on. So we went out to the little island and did it at night a couple of nights later and we do all the content and then We get back in this little boat. was like a little Zodiac, but it was, we had five people in it and we're like hanging onto each other. She didn't fall out.
We had a one and a half horsepower engine. was a tiny little rubber raft. So then we're going back in to the island, is probably 40 or 50 meters, not very far to the island. And the one of the safety guys is in the front of the boat and he's got his flashlight out and he's looking out for rocks. Cause all this jagged volcanic rock. So he's looking out for rocks. And all of sudden we hear this and I'm sitting. right across, jammed in from my producer, Brian Nat Miller, is the producer.
Long red hair, it, he's built like a giraffe, has a neck about this long. And we hear this smash, plop, plop, plop, plop, plop, plop, plop. We all start screaming. uh The boat just is like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, what the fuck was that, what was that, what was that? It was a fish, fish jumped in the boat. What the fuck? And we're like, we all calmed down for minute, like what happened? A fish jumped in the boat. Did you see it? I didn't see it.
It's like this huge fish jumped right under the boat. And I'm like, oh shit, Brian. And his head's down like, Brian, did you see that fish? And his head comes up and he's like, blood is just gushing out of his neck. He's got this like dime size hole, like right about here, just above his trap, but in his neck. And it's not pulsing blood, but it's like flowing. It's like blood is. flowing out not under arterial pressure but about as flowy as it can get without being under arterial pressure.
And so we're like, yeah, direct pressure only. We take him in and we take him back to where they were staging everything and they sew him up. Our set medic sews them up. And we're on a little island off the coast of Panama. I mean, we're as far removed really, we're pretty far removed from any help. The only electricity we have is from a generator, small generator. And so they sew it up and then they're do you feel any better?
And he's like, feel a little better, but then they noticed this big lump in his neck. And they're like, my God. they had to put them in a boat, drive him to the next Island that had a airstrip that they could actually light up with the generator. So they got a small plane in and then flew them to mainland pant to Panama city where he went a surgery. And what happens is Ballyhoo, have these proboscis on there, these flying fish. You have these big spears on the front of them, about this long.
And one of them had. jumped out of the boat, attracted by our safety guy, our safety guy screwed him over, was flash lighting, you know, and so the fish was attracted to light, jumped in the boat, stabbed him through the neck, broke off two inches of proboscis in this dude's neck, a centimeter from his carotid artery and a centimeter and a half from his spinal cord, and then broke it off and then flopped and fell into the ocean.
So they had to cut the other side of his neck and push it all the way through. and then irrigate it. That ended up being in the episode. Yeah, it was crazy. So this dude almost got killed by a flying fish. The luckiest, unlucky dude I've ever heard in my life. It's so interesting that you bring that up because I've noticed in my career, a lot of those super near misses where it's like another centimeter, another inch, and it would have been a completely, probably life-threatening injury.
So good for you for being there, having the knowledge and the background to be able to put that direct pressure, direct treatment, and make sure that he got evac. So had you not been there, there's a potential that that could have ended a lot more poorly. Well, we had a couple of guys there. We're all working on them, but still it was a crazy, crazy experience. And you know what mean? Then of course it was, went out and was aired on Discovery Channel. And so now everybody knows his story.
It was intense. So I wanna be respectful of your time. I know that you don't have a ton more time for this show. I'm super grateful that you did come on with us. Before we go, I would like to touch on your book, The Bugout Guide. Maybe tell us a little bit about the heartbeat behind that, the vision behind it, and what you're doing with it. I'm super glad you brought that up. So I have my book, a Navy SEALs bugging guide.
What I was doing, man, about that same time, bug out bags became the cool thing in the public eye. Kind of that intersection of the public gets fascinated with some aspect of military life and bug out bags was the thing and bugging out. So being that I was essentially doing that professionally for a global audience on TV against the most baddest dudes on the planet, everyone will always ask me, know, what's in your bug out bag? And what's your bug out plan?
Do you want to market some bug out bag, put your name on it? And I always said, you know, I mean, it's an awesome skill set and it makes for fantastic TV. And it's something that's obviously very close to my heart and something I developed as a skill set, not ever really seeing that it was going to be valuable for anything other than my own personal edification. But bugging out except in very unique and specific circumstances is the worst possible choice. I mean, this is escaping a bit.
This is when everything that can possibly go wrong has gone wrong. And now you're at the very last year, I've got your E &E kit, you got your bug out bag, and you're desperately running away only to have to try to reestablish shelter, water, food, navigation, communication, connection with friendlies, all the things that you have in your house.
So it makes much more tactical and strategic sense to prepare your house so that you should never have to bug out except for If a tornado is barreling straight towards your house or you live in the Pacific Palisades or something like that, and you got to get away. Aside from that, everything else, civil unrest, war, riots, uh EMP, knocking the grid down, blackouts, weather events, all that stuff, prepare so that you have all the things you need and you have a plan.
More importantly, as you know, you never want to make a plan when you're cold, wet, tired, hungry, or afraid. That's what you make your plan when you're your very best so that when you are cold, wet, tired, hungry, and afraid, you have your training, your plan already established when you know you're your soundest of mind, established and laid out. And then you can go, okay, well, what's my plan? I'm not thinking very well. All I want to do is eat a meal and go to sleep, but here's my plan.
Okay, here's what we got. Boom, boom, boom, boom. Execute, execute, execute, you know? So I put in here a guide and there's something in here for everybody. Season preppers, know, season. bushcraft people, there's something in this for them. But I mostly wanted to write it for people who are not preppers, who were not thinking like we think and have that mindset where you're just naturally protecting your house for your family and stuff. It's just, you can't not do that.
That's just something that's wired in our DNA. Well, it's not wired in everybody's DNA. And there's a lot of single mothers out there and families that never thought that we'd see what we've seen since 2020 or 2017 until now.
And so, Here's a way that anybody, no matter what kind of living situation they have or what kind of budget they have, can have all the options to develop all those aspects of survival and security so that they'll be able to work within their budget and within their skill set and maybe more importantly, within their comfort zone of what they're comfortable doing and what they're envisioning for them and preparing for. And they'll have everything they need right here.
I have QR code so people can scan it. and go right to Amazon or Walmart or whatever, and order online, whatever tool or item I highlight in here for whatever section it might be. But, you know, we cover food, water, water storage, food storage, like you mentioned, menus, communications, a big one, ingress, egress, fortifying your house if you have to defend it, routes, visuals, dealing with FEMA, dealing with the government, even for long-term stuff.
I've got how to build some field expedient, you know, generators and Amish refrigerators and power generators and things. They're going to take a couple hours of your afternoon to build and some supplies. But if we're in a more long-term area, if you have a lot of land or if you really want to be fully prepared, I have everything in here that anyone could need. I'm pretty proud of it. It is super amazing, absolutely.
even, hey, an electricity, a refrigerator that doesn't even need an electricity, there's plans for that in there. I mean, like I said, when I say it leaves nothing to chance, nothing to question, he is that detailed. He shows you exactly how to do it, considerations, pros, cons, even choices of firearms. Literally, this book is the exhaustive resource for anyone who is looking to prepare their family for an emergency. So I love the heartbeat behind it.
Yeah, we have a, you know, unconditional money back guarantee and you get some free downloads of some other electronic books when you buy it. Of course, mine is a physical copy because that's it. wouldn't make sense to have a book like this, not be a physical copy, but you also get free downloads of some other electronic books on some foraging and, and plant wild plants and things like that and a money back guarantee. So bugging in guide.com.
If you're not a hundred percent satisfied, send it back. The rest of the stuff is yours to keep, but we'll give you your money back. um Are there any one, two big takeaways from there that you haven't shared that you think of? I think there is one thing I want to say because there, tend to be, I've noticed there's kind of a divergence of schools of thought really when in the prepping and homesteading and survival and bugging in kind of communities.
And one of them is what we've always kind of, or I always have, and a lot of our brothers kind of always have is like, yeah, shit, it's a fan. Let's go take your shit. You know, cause I have guns and I have ammo and all that. Well, if you really think that through, that's a terrible idea. It will work once. And then you've created something that's much worse.
so really over the course of my career and my life, I have really moved towards gravitated more toward building community because community is what we want. I want to build the America that I want to live in. So I have my dairy farmer down the street that I buy my raw milk from every week. have my cattle ranch where they get my antibiotic free, grass fed, grass finished, pasture raised, beef and turkey and pork from. I raise chickens, so I have my own eggs. have a garden. I bees.
I know the herbalists in my town and I know all these people and they can come get things from me and I can get things from them. And if shit were to hit the fan, you know what? And everybody from Nashville is now starting to come out here to the country to try to get all the things that they can't get.
Well, the guy who I've been buying grass fed and grass finished beef from every year, every month for the last three or four years, when I know on a first name basis of Mike, my dairy farmer, who are they going to sell to? You know, I've got relationships and we've got people that we can take care of each other and we can build the America that I want to live in. And so that's really the heartbeat behind the heartbeat. That's the intention.
And what I hope people get out of it is not go buy all these guns. tell you to buy and then you can take everything you need from your neighbor and you build the punji pits and stuff. No, don't do that. You're going to kill your neighbor's cat, your kid, his kid and his dog's gonna get stabbed up. And then your neighbor's going to hate you and everything's going to go to shit. So build community. build the America that we want to be in because this kind of stuff is not just for hitting the fan.
This is for connection to the life that we live. I absolutely love that. That's a big part of our heartbeat here too. And that's a great place to put a pin on it. Thank you so much for being on the show. Is there any place that you'd like to send the listeners for where they can find you? Well, BuckingInGuide.com is where you can get my book, but on my social medias, I'm pretty active. You can find me on Joel Lambert as an account on Facebook and then Joel5326 on Instagram and Twitter.
And you can always reach out to me through there. I'm pretty responsive if anybody wants to. Super great. It's been excellent having you on the show and a little heads up for the listeners. We will be doing a promotion where you have a chance to win a, I think I'm gonna have two, one of two of these books. So thank you so much for being on the show. We look forward to seeing your future success and progress and thanks for sharing all of your wisdom with us. Cheers, Thank you.
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