-Give me your money.
-Oh, my gosh. -Blah, blah. -Hey, it's Zeke, I'm riding in
the back of a pickup truck through a prepper community,
and I'm trying to figure out if we should be afraid
at the end of the world so. -I have been
to one degree or another, preparing for my entire life. The father God is calling
his people to the Ozarks. -Demons and angels were real
and Jesus wasn't a pussy. -People in the year 1,000
thought the world was ending. People who saw the plague
thought the world was ending. I think it's more relevant
to your life to look at what could be a natural
disaster for you, personally. -In New York City,
nobody knows how to do anything. You don't have to use
a lot of survival skills. -Tourniquet, left arm.
Hurry up, hurry up, hurry up. Hurry up! Hurry up! Hurry up! You're dying, hurry up! -We have a phrase we use,
I can be your best friend or your worst enemy
you get to pick. -Ah, ah. [ Squeals, gunshot ] -Clearly, we are gun positive, but I like to say
we're not gun crazy. [ Gun cocks ] [ Gunshots ] -Are doomsday preppers
right on the brink... ...mysterious monoliths
have been appearing... -As clickbait headlines
warp our view of the world, we're going down
the rabbit hole to ask how afraid should we really be? On this episode -- Doomsday. -Store shelves nationwide
are dwindling or totally empty. -FEMA admits failures occurred
in its disaster response to Hurricane Maria. -A ransomware attack forced
a vital U.S. pipeline offline over the weekend. -There's a lot of fear
on the news these days. With global pandemic,
raging natural disasters, and a fragmenting republic, we've been forced to think
about a possible scenario where our institutions collapse. I started hanging around
the corners of the Internet where doomsday
preppers congregate, and I stumbled upon
the Viking Preparedness YouTube and Patreon channels. -The world is going crazy. -What intrigued me
about the former Green Beret turned pastor
Joe Fox was his caffeine-fueled
sense of urgency. -Preparedness is
a biblical concept. You have to take steps now. If you're not ready,
you're in trouble. -He also scared
the shit out of me when I told him
I lived in New York City. Feeling rather unsafe
in my own home, I went to meet
Pastor Joe to learn more about his lifestyle, which did seem
a little extreme to me. But I also wanted to see
what I could do in my own life to be more prepared. -Welcome to the Shofar Mountain.
-Hey, good to meet you, man. -You, too. You, too. -I brought you some coffee from
New York because I know -- I see you drinking coffee
every morning, big sips of coffee.
-I do. So thank you very much. -Yeah, yeah, yeah.
-This is Shofar Mountain. -Okay. -It started out
as an intentional community. We wanted to live in a way that would allow us
to get closer to God and it has become what was known
in the vernacular as a prepper retreat. -And so everybody lives on here
are Shofarians. -All people
who live here are Shofarians, but not all Shofarians
live here. -Okay, right.
-Does that make sense? -Right. Yes, absolutely.
-We call ourselves Shofarians. It's just a whimsical term
we came up with. -Well, it's a great term.
I love it. I love it. So how many people live
with you up here on Shofar Mountain?
-That's classified. -Okay, all right.
-But a few. -A few. Let me see --
-A few families. -More than a --
a few families. More than a dozen families?
-A few families. -Okay, all right. All right. As a security measure,
Pastor Joe was repeatedly vague with some of my more
specific questions. -We call it
operational security. Those are classified.
I won't tell you. -Okay, okay. What happens
if somebody came in here, would you just kind of
stop them here and say, hey. -We have -- we have
stopped people in the past. And honestly, I think
I'm a pretty nice guy. I mean, as things go, I'm an asshole with trespassers. -Yeah, this is a good time. Let me ask you what you have
on your -- on your hip here. -I mean, I'm just carrying
a handgun, it's a glock. -Where you're carrying a glock?
Okay. -Yeah, everybody carries glocks.
-Are you always armed? -Yeah.
-You never leave house. -I never go anywhere
without a gun. -Okay.
-There you go. Just don't point
the muzzle anywhere. -Okay. I asked Pastor Joe to show me
some of these firearms. -I'll have to come back.
-Okay, let's do this load. -I have too many guns
to carry in one trip that makes me a survivalist. -And it's always he was
elusive in his answers. I can ask you
how many guns you have? -Enough. I'll be back.
-Okay. -But he was willing
to show me a basic preppers firearm kit. Wow, okay. This is an assortment of...
-Prepper firearms. -Okay, and it's not
your full inventory, this is enough of --
enough -- this is enough. -It's enough
to get the point across. -Okay, okay. -These are
the types of firearms that someone who's relatively
serious about preparedness would probably have. -I think with
a lot of folks today, they might just say,
oh, I've got a glock and I'm good to go
or I've got an AR-15, I'm good to go.
Why do you have such -- -Well, they're all tools
and they all have a purpose. And while you can drive a screw into a piece of wood
with a hammer, it's not the best tool
to do that. -Sure. You could do everything
with an AR-15, right? You could be whole defense,
you could be hunting. -I mean, technically you could kill any animal
in North America with a .22,
I mean, honestly. But when it comes to a fight, if you have to shoot
a lot of bullets and reload, you need the ability
to have a magazine fed weapon that you can reload fast
and so that's why I have it. -Pastor Joe invited me
to join some other Shofarians at their shooting range to learn more about
why they train. -Cody is our range officer. I'm going to be
the safety officer. -So we're just going
to start with pistols. Focus on the fundamentals. Give me one shot and we'll
do that a couple of times. -We're good guys. I think
you're probably a good guy. We don't get to pick
when bad things happen. Bad guys get the pick, right. You and I aren't
going to walk around starting stuff with anybody, but we don't control
the bad guy. And we train everybody. -Take your time.
Look at the sights. -As I watch some impressive
shooting skills and even got a brief lesson on
how to aim and unloaded AR-15... -You want to lean into the rifle almost like,
you ever played football? -Yeah, yeah, well,
no, I didn't. Sorry. -Okay. -I've seen it done before.
-Correct. Very similar to that. -I still couldn't
quite understand what exactly
they were preparing for. What scenarios create these
so-called bad guys? What do you think about
when you go, oh, I got my eye on that.
-Well, we're biblically focused. And so, in the Bible
we can read about the end times. And I believe, we believe,
we could be on the cusp of that. And if that happens, it's chaos.
Society will break down. There's at least two places
in the United States that are going to be nuked,
it's biblical. And New York City's
one of them. And it'll happen like that. Somebody maliciously
takes down our power grid. Some really smart computer
guys are like... [ imitates keyboard clacking ] Well, what do you do in America
with no electricity? Think about it,
America would go into chaos. And our response to COVID,
I'm not real impressed with. I was raised with just that whole we need to be ready
for things we can't control. And then I went in the military
on some special forces. I've been all over the world. I've seen things that fall apart and I see how people
who are prepared for it and roll with the changes
and do okay and people who are just like,
oh, my God, I can't believe this happened,
they they just get dealt with. And I don't want to be
dealt with. [ Rooster crows ] -As part of not being dealt
with Shofar Mountain is based on homestead model, which stresses the importance
of self-sufficiency. The property includes multiple
bug out cabins that serve as modest shelters
when shit hits the fan. -This will probably end up being
like a bedroom of some kind. It'll get finished.
-Okay. They're small,
but it beats a tent. -Some more permanent residences
for Joe's family. So the six people
who sleep in here. -Uh-huh. There's some kind of
big bed theory or something. I don't think they're
doing that anymore. But like,
they're a very tight family. -An active garden. -And this little thing
here is fennel. It's really sweet and kind of,
you know what it tastes like. -Oh, that's perfect.
That's perfect. Oh, my gosh. And lots of stockpiled goods, including these buckets
and barrels of food. -Beans, rice, corn,
stuff like that. And we've done the math so you
could think of two of these is basically a year's supply
of food for one person. -You know,
before you said on the porch, you said you're I think you said
a hardcore prepper, I think, is that the term you used?
-Okay. -What does that mean exactly? -Well, I guess there's
a spectrum, right? I think a prepper would probably have
a couple of months worth. So, you know, they've got
a little bit of food. They've got some gadgets.
They have a bug out bag. Okay, that's a prepper. We're at the other end
of the spectrum. We're trying to be
self-sufficient. I call us neopioneers, kind of
like the Amish with guns. -The Amish with guns.
Okay, okay. Finally, Pastor Joe, showed me
the newly added longhouse, which serves as a meeting place
for the congregation he leads. I've seen this building
in your videos. Right,
we have our services in here, but we also have like community
classes in here. -I knew the Shofarians
believed in Jesus, who they call Yeshua, but there were
several instances of Judaism I couldn't quite wrap
my head around. We've got Hebrew writing here.
-Yep, Israel. -And the Shofar here.
-Yeah. -But you still talk
about the Bible. So what exactly is it -- -You want to know about
my religion? -Yeah, I guess, yes.
-There you go. Okay, so we firmly believe in,
when I say believe, it's too small
of a word that we know. God, the father,
laid down the rules that he wants everybody
to live by, and that's called Torah, right? So 613 rules,
you got to live by these rules. And he sent his son,
Jesus Christ, who said, follow me, dun, dun, dun, dun,
and the whole Christian schtick, if you will,
there we put the two together, -Okay. -Because we don't think
there's any difference. We're getting to heaven,
if you will, by the grace of God,
through the blood of Yeshua. That's what we believe. -What makes it so much
more advantageous for you to be here in this community?
-First of all, is the Ozarks. Many people, not just me,
have the same feeling. The father God is calling
his people to the Ozarks as a place of safety
for what's coming. And here's the thing
about the Ozarks. We have everything we need, but we don't
have anything in abundance that anybody
strategically wants to control. -Wanting to get a better sense of how big
the Shofaran community was, I drove a few hours south
to meet a second group. We're about to go meet up
with T.J., who also goes by
Bear Independent, where what's in
his bear camp around here. And he's another kind of
satellite campus, if you will, of the Shofarians. One tribe,
but multiple camps. I can't say what town we're in. But it's tiny
and it's not a lot going on. ♪♪ Hey, man, how are you?
Good to see you. Hey, how's it going?
-Hey, how's it going? -Good morning.
-Hello. -Hello, hello, I'm Zeke.
Nice to meet you guys. -How you doing? -My name's T.J. Morris.
Bear of Bear Independent. -So what's your connection
to Shofar Mountain? -There are multiple camps. If you're near to us,
then you're in bear camp. If you're near to Pastor Jones
then you're in mountain camp, so forth and so on. -You've got the tattoos,
you play the drums, you like whiskey. And you don't strike me
as the stereotype of a Bible thumper.
-Bible thumper? -Of a holy man. -Well, point blank,
Jesus wasn't a pussy. Straight up,
everybody in this group would first
and foremost acknowledge that she was Yeshua Mashiach,
that Jesus is the Christ, but there's
something deeper here with what we're doing,
other than the fact that we've all agreed
to mutually assist one another. If the shit hits the fan,
bro, like, that's great. But I'm not living for doomsday.
I'm living for Tuesday. -Across town, T.J.
showed me his first aid company that he runs with other members
of bear camp. -Well, this is Refuge Medical. We are a first day
supply company and training organization. -There are many okay
first aid kits. There's a handful
of great ones. And ours is one
of the great ones. -We do, in fact,
to have it with me. -Oh, you do?
-Yeah. -Oh, where is it?
-Yeah, bring it. Yeah, bring it. -It's very little. I'm going to
have them look at it. I hope they don't judge me,
judge us too hard. -Whoa, oh! -Wow. You knew exactly
just by looking at that. You knew what that is. -Do you know how to put
a tourniquet on? -You want me to put
a tourniquet on me? -Tourniquet, left arm!
Hurry up, hurry up, hurry up. -Uhh...okay. You want me put
a tourniquet on myself? Okay. -You're dying! Hurry up!
-You're bleeding to death. -You're dying. Hurry up!
Hurry up! Hurry up! Hurry up! Hurry up! -You really have to know
your supply. -Bet you feel his pulse. -See, I got a pulse.
I'm still alive, right? -You are all the way dead.
-[ Laughs ] -You're going to love
this feeling. -Actually constrict that.
Feel the difference? -Yeah.
-Okay. And then this is
how tight it should be. -Watch his face.
-See that face? Here it is. -Ow.
-See that? -Then that goes through and then this goes
across there. -Feel the difference? -What do you feel in my pulse?
-Nothing. -Really is my arm, like, uh...
-That's the point. -It's supposed to restrict the flow of blood
from here down. -Yeah. Yeah.
Can we take it off now? -If it doesn't stop the flow,
you haven't saved your life. -And look,
you see all the veins. -Yeah. Yeah.
-That's how it should be. -See that? That's how
you know it's working. -Real quick, yes or no. Are you guys afraid
of the end of the world? -I'm not afraid.
-Anybody? Anybody here afraid?
Okay. -This is not a fear. -It's not from fear.
It's common sense. When you know something
is going to happen, where you have
a reasonable suspicion, why would you not
prepare for it? -Anybody who thinks that
the government is capable of managing a crisis,
Hurricane Katrina, it is not physically possible
for the government to take care of everybody
on a large scale crisis. Because of those experiences,
we've been able to figure out how to address
those needs for ourselves that should something happen, we're not at the mercy
of the government. ♪♪ -Now that I had a better
understanding as to why the Shofarians
valued self-sufficiency, I asked the Foxes to show me
some basic survival tricks. Sister Kate showed me a day
in the life of running a homestead. -So we're going to take this
big brush pile down to our chicken run. -Back boys. Oh, sorry.
Oh, no. And taught me how
to milk a goat. -Think of it like
a water balloon and you're squeezing the water
out the bottom. There you go. You did it.
-Oh! -Look at you. There you go.
Perfect. Oh, wow.
That's just amazing. With that,
you could feed yourself. You can have goat's milk,
you can have goat cheese. -Right. [ Bleats ]
-That was lovely. And considering I don't own
a firearm, Pastor Joe
showed me how to defend myself against bad guys with some
rather unsuspecting objects. -And there's all kinds of things
you can do with this. Of course,
you can use teeth. Picture scraping
my eyes with it. I can come up here
and hit you in the neck like this and rip the face.
-Yeah. -Use this like a hook
and hook them here. -Yeah. -Or somebody's got you like this
and you just reach back. Ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta. -Ahh, ah.
-See? See? And it's nothing, right?
-Yeah. -But it's like get off me.
-Yeah. -Boom. -Like that,
like step in there. You've got a table
full weapons here but for self-defense
you don't even need all this. I mean, you're --
you're more lethal with a comb that I am with an AR -- -They're called
environmental weapons. -The more time I spend
with the Shofarians, the more I realize
how this type of lifestyle was not as extreme
as it was prudent. You know, I'm surprised by
how normal everything is here. You and your husband
watch Netflix. You both have a really
good sense of humor. You're both -- you're both -- you're both
very charming individuals. -Oh, thank you.
-I don't know. -I've just you know, I think it's really easy to
to be able to -- on paper, to be like these people
must be some sort of cult, out of your minds. I don't know.
The Waco people or something. -[ Humming ] -Sure, exactly. What is the perception
that you get from other people and what's the reality? -Okay, so we've been called
Amish mercenaries. We've been -- we've been called
gun toting Bible zealots. But yeah, I consider us
more kind of '50s style mom and dad, kind of "normal." -Who's to blame
for this kind of for -- for troping you out,
if you will? -There are movies that would
portray people like this as very extreme or just add dimension
to what we actually are. I mean, all we'd have to do is,
you know, be more gun-friendly or a little more extreme
in our political views. And then you could kind of have
an argument for extremism there. -As my time with the Shofarians
came to a close, I was ready to return
to New York motivated to ensure my own
safety should chaos ensue. I was, however,
still having difficulty imagining a life that balances
preparedness with paranoia. You know, for certain folks,
it's really easy to sit around and watch the news all day and get really into
the survivalist mindset and just say, okay,
I'm not going to interact with this world because it's going
to end any day now. -Right. -And then just essentially
waiting around for... -Chaos.
-For chaos. -When I will rise and be --
right. But we should prepare as humans
on at least two axis. Chaos could be
around the corner. And the other one
is you're going to get old in a relatively
normal society, despite the fact that
you don't like the government. It's going to pretty much
go along as it has. And so, you ought to have
a plan for that besides, you know,
buckets of beans and rice and an arsenal of firearms
or something. And so, you do have
to play on two axis, which means if I have
$30 of disposable income, do I buy mutual funds
or do I buy rice and beans? Yes.
-Yes. -Yes. You should do both. ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪
Jim Bakker to the extreme. Wow
whats interesting is that ellen white despite all the end times nonsense never told people to take up weapons