In this episode, Mark Novak, a renowned and well known gunsmith out of Charleston, SC join Eric & Matt to discuss firearms and much more.
CHECK OUT MARK ON YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCM86hA7E1y3vOJuzdqCXh1Q
Eric & Matt are both former US Army combat veterans who served together while deployed to Iraq during OIF III. Eric is most known for his YouTube channel IraqVeteran8888 which has over 2.3 million subscribers currently as well as his outspoken and no compromise stance regarding the 2nd amendment.
Matt runs Ballistic Ink which is a branding and merchandising company serving 2A content creators and the firearms industry. He is also very passionate about the 2nd amendment and freedom.
APPAREL AND OTHER MERCH:
https://ballisticink.com/
http://www.iraqveteran8888.com/
CHECK OUT OUR YOUTUBE CHANNELS:
https://www.youtube.com/c/iraqveteran8888
https://www.youtube.com/c/Guitarsenal
© 2020 Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit
In this episode, Mark Novak, a renowned and well known gunsmith out of Charleston, SC join Eric & Matt to discuss firearms and much more.
CHECK OUT MARK ON YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCM86hA7E1y3vOJuzdqCXh1Q
Eric & Matt are both former US Army combat veterans who served together while deployed to Iraq during OIF III. Eric is most known for his YouTube channel IraqVeteran8888 which has over 2.3 million subscribers currently as well as his outspoken and no compromise stance regarding the 2nd amendment.
Matt runs Ballistic Ink which is a branding and merchandising company serving 2A content creators and the firearms industry. He is also very passionate about the 2nd amendment and freedom.
APPAREL AND OTHER MERCH:
https://ballisticink.com/
http://www.iraqveteran8888.com/
CHECK OUT OUR YOUTUBE CHANNELS:
https://www.youtube.com/c/iraqveteran8888
https://www.youtube.com/c/Guitarsenal
© 2020 Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit
Welcome back, everybody. This is Eric and Matt. And this is life, liberty and the pursuit, your beacon of freedom and the American way of life. Tune in every Friday for a new episode as we dive into the world of liberty and what makes our country great. Alright guys getting into today's episode. All right, and we got Mr. Mark Novak from Anvil Gunsmithing. Wonderful dude, one of my favorite human beings. What a great guy, Mark, how you doing?
Mark :Just another beautiful day in paradise. Great to be here, guys. I really love it. Thanks for inviting me over to Casa IV888. This is awesome.
Eric :Absolutely. So for those listening, we've got Matt here. Hello. All right. And I'm Eric. And then we have mark. Okay, so if you guys aren't familiar, Mark has an outstanding YouTube channel with tons of great gunsmithing content, and we're not talking just your average gunsmithing Either this guy takes a lot of obscure guns that are very, very few. There's not many of them out there and he takes these pieces of history and he preserves them. And he maintains them and get them out there and keep them working. Okay, which is really, really cool stuff. So I thought that today's podcasts, it would be a lot of fun to maybe just touch on, like what Mark does. I mean, since he's our guest, we want to make sure that he feels welcome, and we can talk about anything he wants. So, Mark, how long have you been gunsmithing?
Mark :Well, I built my first gun when I was 11 years old. My father bought me one of those CVA flintlock kits. I'm old enough that I was one of those guys that got turned on to black powder by Daniel Boone used to be on it. Oh, yeah, except I'm old enough to watched it in network. And I was really into that my father was was a Sabre Jet pilot back in the 50s. So I had a father that understood certain things about how to shoot and just Got the fact that the world was not a nice place. So he bought me a kit and I started building a gun. So that was, geez 45 years ago, 46 years ago, built my first one. And I've been going ever since I've had some detours along the way. But, you know, I really just didn't. They're all machines to me. And this is all about keeping things from dying and premature death because of a lack of maintenance. And as we'll talk about here, I'm guessing we now have the technology to spread the gospel of, of doing the maintenance.
Eric :Absolutely. You know, I think it's really important. firearms are a super, super interesting engineering perspective. Because think about, okay, you think about all the things from our past that haven't survived into today's world, right? And the reason it is, is because people don't associate the value of something, right, right. So it's really easy to say, Oh, this old telephone that you have to crank up, okay, that's intrinsically cool, right? But it doesn't. It doesn't have staying power. In terms of why we would need it around today, right, but an old flintlock musket it still works it works as good as the day it was made if it was properly taken care of. So it's it's useful firearms have a usefulness that far far exceeds any other item especially going into antiquity.
Mark :True and there's two things that I'm that I'm very fond of saying one. Any machine is only knew once and two specifically about guns. The firearm does not know how old it is. It doesn't know that it's not 1778 we've got a gun in here now we're going to shoot this weekend. In 1778 the gun doesn't know how old it is if you load it with the correct ammunition. The gun doesn't know it will run if you do your part. Okay. I'm the opposite of one of those guys that clear coats the patina into a 67 Cuda I don't do that. I don't clear coat over rust. I don't understand that. It's rust OK? No, no, it's, it's hit. Yeah. And eventually somebody's gonna have to tell me when a lack of maintenance turns into patina and then takes off in an entirely different direction.
Eric :Absolutely.
Matt :So to help our listeners understand you are a gunsmith by trade, you mainly work or you mainly focus on older firearms, girl
Mark :nut and steel. Okay, I'm not a big fan of plastic, but that doesn't mean because one, there are a whole lot of people that are very, very good at maintaining the stuff that was made since World War Two. There are not a whole lot of people that are good at maintaining this stuff made before it. And I prefer working in Walmart and steel, it's just me. Okay, so while I can build you a pretty nice 1911 Why? Because while the other 11 guys that I know build a 1911 I'm sorry, a rev on your shotgun barrel. Okay, and there. I need you to solder on that ribbon, that shotgun barrel. They go running away. Okay, so you know what I mean?
Matt :So you're I mean that that's admirable, you're preserving the past. You're taking You're giving new life to firearms that would essentially not be here anymore.
Mark :They wouldn't be here anymore. And the big one is to stop them from dying in the first place. I'm not even I won't wine one all the way back to New I'll take one back to it's about 40 years old. But you got to stop it from dying. And a lot of people nowadays don't even know what that looks like.
Matt :Yeah, I mean, you brought in some really, really cool firearms and I ones that I've never actually seen in person, so I have an appreciation while I don't have an opportunity to shoot those all the time. I mean, it's really awesome to be able to hold one like a old musket or a black powder weapon that I've never had the opportunity to shoot so and I'm gonna be really awesome to do it.
Mark :Yeah. And specifically here, what we're talking about. I have a reproduction of a 1778 Ferguson, screw barrel flintlock. I have a contempory but very nice 62 caliber flintlock handgun. Because Eric hasn't shot a flintlock before. So we're going to go ahead and we're going to go and take that aspect of his life and we're going to convert that over minus we'll do it on one of the rarest flintlock military arms ever, or even the reproductions are rare. handgun wise we have two semi automatic revolvers, of which I've done Anvil episodes on both we have a material owner classics from the 1980s and we have a Ferguson from nine out of Ferguson Listen to me, a Webley Fosbury and they're both semi automatic recall operated revolvers. When you pull the trigger the whole top of the gun comes back and on its way forward. The cylinder indexes it stays cocked and it's pretty cool.
Matt :I did see that.
Mark :Yeah, we're bringing those in. And when we've got a veteran Lee that we brought here that had been conserved and that I brought a couple I brought Eric's Drilling back I've done an episode on Eric's Drilling. He goes on my trigger guards messed up and from across the room without my glasses on, I noticed that the bedding was screwed up, because it's a Drilling therefore the bedding is screwed up. So we brought a lot of interesting kit. I'm sitting in a room full of equipment that really intrigues me. It's all a matter of a really what, what would get you going there. And for me, it's that older, rarer stuff. I get asked, Where do you find all of this hardware? The answer is it finds me because the illusion of competence is intoxicating to my customers. They love that. Oh my God, this guy might know what he's doing.
Eric :Well, the interesting thing about that, Mark, is that you wind up running into people that all right, say they bring you some obscure gun, there's only 10 of the world. Okay? Who knows how to work on that. I mean, who has worked on it? So see, that's the issue is, you know, there there might be certain guns where It's sort of a body of knowledge you have to have access to from your experience of working on stuff. You may not run into a person's actually ever even cracked one of these weird old guns I mean, like that Tower Gun that we're looking at. Right that 75 caliber Whitworth tower gun that I might be getting. I mean,
Mark :Those about making extra breach blocks for
Eric :How many of those things exist? Right? So
Mark :How many Chauchat are there? Exactly. So
Eric :There's just a certain pedigree of gunsmith in terms of people that are looking for someone to work on something super super obscure like like that walking cane gun that we did the video on. Oh, yeah, really obscure stuff
Mark :Or would even know that if you actually really hung on to it, it might break. And why Really? No, it might break. You're the only person that the gentleman that got that back by the way was thrilled hanging on the wall in his gun shop and everybody looks at it. And there is a still photograph of you shooting it off the video next to it.
Eric :Oh, well, that that makes me feel really cool. That really I make you feel like a cool guy
Mark :Yeah you gave it some level. So some level of notoriety there I would say,
Eric :You know, it is so neat. Out of all the guns that you brought down. I've always really been intrigued by the Mateba and the Fosbery just because they are such unique actions and really, really interesting pieces of engineering. But out of all the stuff he brought down, the the man in history that has always intrigued me the most in the British military was Patrick Ferguson. And he was just such a abstract and sort of weird fellow, you know, he had his mistress Virginia Sal, which, you know, she was definitely a pistol and he died on Kings Mountain.
Mark :Let's just say he lived large.
Eric :Yes, he was definitely a colorful fellow. So I've always been intrigued by the Vargas and rifle because of its association with Patrick Bergson. He was very much you know, your typical British officer and he was 110% like by the book.
Unknown Speaker :Well, let's consider the fact that he was also a little bit of a politician too, because that Ferguson rifle that he had made cost 25 times as much as the Brown Bess. So essentially what he did was to say I need 100. Guys, I need to equip them with 100 weapons that costs 25 times as much and essentially said to the British government, in today's money, I'd like you to just kick me about 20 or 25. mil. And let me go hack around a bit.
Eric :Yeah, I mean, he put together an experimental rifle corps consisting of a little over 100 men. Yeah. And it's just really crazy.
Mark :I mean his gunpowder was twice as expensive. Yeah, everything this guy did was huge.
Eric :Yeah. I mean, if folks that are listening, if you've never heard of Patrick Burgess and look him up, he's got a super colorful history and, you know, he did get dye on Kings Mountain and it was a bloody battle, and they wound up shooting him like three times and got bayoneted by, like 12 different people he got when they found his body had 12 bayonet wounds, three bullet holes and a wounded arm. From early on in the war. He got shot in Arm had like a wounded arm so we had to fight on horseback with one arm and a sword. But he was trying to reload a Ferguson rifle with like one arm and everything.
Unknown Speaker :But he was enough of a gentleman that when he was in an advanced sniper lookout position and George Washington and Kazmir Pulaski road up, he didn't shoot him.
Eric :Right. And I know, people recall the the name Fort Pulaski is named after Pulaski. So that is an interesting story I've always heard about the man that had Washington in his sights was Patrick Ferguson. And it's just you know whether or not that true that that story is true, or whether or not it's embellished. I like to believe the stories because it does sort of romanticize British military valor at the time it was like a super offensive to you know, harm someone who wasn't a threat to you.
Unknown Speaker :Right it was to pick off a defenseless. Yeah, and you have to look it's a plausible story because all three men were in theater at the same time. So what's plausible? Let's just roll with that.
Eric :I would I would like to say that the story is probably a little embellished, but I believe
Matt :It sounds it makes for a very good story. Every story
Mark :at every army story, right? That's right.
Eric :That's right. So what's on the horizons? I mean, what do you have going on new projects?
Unknown Speaker :Well, there are several things upcoming projects that I'm doing is part two of "Why Did My Gun Explode?" and I've been asked for that. So I've been collecting of guns that were shot out of headspace shot with excessive ammo shot out of battery, I got an 1897 that if about another 16th of an inch of metal that missing off that guy would have worn the bolt in his forehead. Wow. So I want to do the second part of that I did the first part it was it was a good episode. What I want to show people is how to recover from that kind of casualty, if you can recover from it and what the consequences are of attempting to. I have a double barreled 75 caliber rifle flintlock that we've been slowly but surely gathering the footage for as we've been planning down the boards turning the breech plugs so that's kind of popping up. I have a 20 millimeter Lotti L39 semi automatic anti tank weapon that we're waiting for the paperwork for. To bring that alive as a destructive device and that's a that's a finish anti-tank absolutely it's designed to be drugged behind your sled Anzio arms is making the ammo for it they use pulled 20 millimeter Vulcan projectiles and that should be pretty crazy.
Eric :I've actually shot a lotti yeah was Chad when we were up there with FPS Russia film in the Lotti episode was that that was a lot or was that a Solothurn? We shot with Solothrun and that's a Swiss anti-tank. Yes.
Unknown Speaker :Do not try this at home unless of course you live in the hospital
Eric :The Lottis are The ones that have the slides on the bottom.
Mark :Okay, this one had the sled in it. The hook that goes through the flash hider, hook it up behind your horse and drag it. And then there's the skis flip up out of the way and then you got a set of spikes. I mean, the thing weighs like 100 pounds, it's not gonna it's not that
Eric :bad. I mean, like, every single part on that sucker is like, no,
Unknown Speaker :like, oh, it is amazing. I just had a gentleman drop two complete Bren guns on me. They were cut, but they were cut very politely. And that's why I agreed to take them on and we're going to do a two or possibly three part Anvil on why I charge $5,000 to weld one of those back together again.
Eric :Yeah it's not exactly like just fixing a an axle or something. You know, I mean,
Unknown Speaker :they have to be brought back semi automatic, but they're still there in campaign boxes with everything. Everything every last thing spare barrel, spare mags, cleaning brushes, the whole nine yards. It's like somebody took a snapshot in 1944 and grab these things.
Eric :Wow. Yeah.
Unknown Speaker :That's pretty. That's pretty Kicking, I have to just straight up hunting rifles on building that that's going to take another year. And then anything else that just happens to come my way. I have a 1893 Winchester pump gun in the shop. And now I've been sent an 1895 and I'm going to do an episode that shows all the reasons why they only made the 1893 for three years. And if you sent your 93 back in, you got a brand new 97 back. And I don't care if you managed to build sentimental value in your 93 and three years you didn't get it back. So I want to show all the engineering differences and show the fact that John Browning was evolving as he went. He only worked a sixteenths of an inch. He literally told his brother take a little bit off here and they would take a little bit off there and with work, the guy was a godsend here were the space aliens way. So between John Moses Browning and Nikola Tesla.
Eric :Yeah, yeah 100% I've always been fascinated by the 1895 Winchester in the gun that I love so much is the 760 by 54 musket that they did for the Russians yes a stripper clip notch on the top that's one gun that we're talking right
Mark :You're talking rifles, I'm talking shotguns right
Eric :I know you're talking about the shotgun right you said 1895 winter I'm thinking of the you know the muskets so I've got
Mark :I've got a for gentleman down in Louisiana I've got a he had a barrel and a receiver for one of those 1895 winchesters. The charger bridge long gone, the barrel had been lopped off and then he went and found a stock off another gun and then all the other parts that were missing off the gun came off a Japanese Winchester copy. So I integrated that all into one great big pile of Jeff Chester.
Eric :Anyway, whatever works.
Unknown Speaker :And now we've got a 1895 carbines and 7.62x54R and that thing roars you have to fuel load burns out in front of the gun. It's awesome.
Matt :Big ole fireball.
Eric :All right, so I'm gonna ask a few questions that might pitch you slightly outside of the realm of
Mark :Anywhere you want to go. Okay.
Eric :All right, so let's go. You mentioned that you don't really like working on as much of the modern stuff. Alright. So in the military's current MTOE, right? Like what current issue military weapons? What do you think is the best weapon system that the military fields today? Currently?
Unknown Speaker :The 249 is pretty nice. Yeah, I think so. Um, honestly, seriously, honestly, it's all garbage. However, the Marines are still carrying 1911s. Gotta give them an up arrow. It's all garbage. And here's why I think it's all garbage. I think the US military is planning for a world in which either not automatically have air superiority over every combat zone. Now remember now this is a Navy guy that was on a submarine talking to an army guy that was on the ground. So I'm not really familiar with I don't work on a lot of it. I really don't. So when I said the 249, you winced. Okay. What else? I don't know, I would just tell you this. The US military has had to relearn this lesson over and over again, big, dumb and slow wins the battle. So in a battlespace, where they're using B52s for close air support, I gotta wonder if the whole world is upside down.
Eric :That's right.
Unknown Speaker :Yeah, I don't know if I was even prepared to answer the question and I'm sorry. No,
Eric :That's okay. So what's your take on the SAW Matt?
Matt :I'm not a huge fan. You know, it's it's very, very unreliable. And I know there's a lot of guys in combat using it right now and they swear by it. In my experience, and we did use them I'm more of a 240 Bravo kinda guy. That I mean that I'll have that thing singing all day. Much more reliable. Of course it's a higher caliber. I know Eric is a Ma Deuce 50 guy, and he's a Mortar guy that to. Mortars will do the job just as good. Now in that aspect I mean, if you're in today's battlefield, I think if you're going to bring mortars to the battlefield, you're going to bring 60s and 81s. I do think the the 120s are a little dated. They have a lot. They have a ton more restrictions on airspace, meaning you have to clear a lot more airspace to use them.
Eric :And those sons are just heavy.
Matt :Yeah. Well, okay, next season at once. We'll do it. So
Unknown Speaker :While you were saying that I thought about something. What is a giraffe? a giraffe is a horse that was designed by a military procurement committee.
Matt :I can see that.
Unknown Speaker :Okay. Big neck, little neck yellow, no Brown, no black little ears, tall ears, horns. Who knows? Right and you wind up with Ah right Why don't they just go back and remake the A10 we learn that it's big it's dumb it's slow it's got a huge gone it tears up anything he gets near everybody except the people that actually spend the money on it. Okay, so you know why me back to the to my nuclear submarine days it's the same thing we needed to Virginia we wound up with the Seawolf I mean, it's it's all just a matter of bigger, better faster who's lining what pockets?
Matt :That's what it comes down to is who use that you see a lot of useless stuff come out of the procurement process.
Unknown Speaker :You know, guys that guys are shooting rattle battle with an M with that with that with that air 15 or 14, whatever we're calling them nowadays. They're using a Benelli Nova for a rifle and for handgun. They're using a some kind of 2011 or some sort of gun that you pay $4,000 for it and doesn't run with the crap. Do you pay me another 500 X to make it work? I run rattle battle with an 1897 a grand and a 1911 now I'm laughing my butt off so hard I can barely breathe while I'm doing it, but I'm having fun. And I'm having fun with equipment that will actually poke man sized holes in stuff.
Eric :You know that there's there seems to be this this certainly discernible disconnect from one generation of people that are used to a certain, you know, level gear and type a gear. You know, you're always gonna have like, the old school Vietnam guys are like, M14 is the king and screw the AR 15 screw the M 16. It sucks, right? And then you got like the people in our generation that, you know, we use the M 16. And but we were able to use a much more refined version that's gone through, you know, plenty of improvements and right the M4 is a very proven gun, you know, and, yeah, there's always a disconnect there. And it's just like the World War II guys. You know what I mean? They They probably came back from the war and they're like, yeah, give me a grand and a 1911. And I can rule the world because they did. I mean, they went over there and they did their job and They fought a very bloody war with those tools and you know, if you're going toe to toe, right back during World War II with the Nazis, right, right. And you were armed with an M1 Grand. Yeah. You had a pretty dang great gun, man. I mean, you had a great guy with a turn bolt five shot bolt action, hunting rifle, basically. Yeah. And you've got a semi automatic and right around shooting black tip. Right, you can kill Nazis through trees. Yeah. I mean, my mom.
Unknown Speaker :And that's so you know, again, yes. I'm not bagging on the gear that our guys have because they have the training to keep it running. All right. But at the end of the day, what's the average? I mean, I don't know what an M4 that comes back from the hot and Sandy looks like but I would be willing to bet you that they just throw it in a garbage can and start over again. I don't know what that environment is. I've never been there. Yeah, I can tell you what happens to anything that's made out of metal on a submarine eventually turns green. That's my experience of it.
Eric :Alright, so so let's, um, let's change gears a little bit quick. All right, we are drinking. As we were making this podcast. We're drinking the wonderful. Oh yeah Balvenie Caribbean cast 14 year old scotch
Matt :and I'm having Old Scout.
Eric :Do you need to need me to refresh your glass? I would Need to move this microphone.
Matt :He needs a refreshment of his libation. Now, while he's refilling marks glass, I will tell you a little bit about this army procurement process and some of the stupidity that comes out of it. While we were deployed, we had the lovely we had the lovely experience of getting the CLP wipes in a can. Looks like a baby wipe dispenser. And then it came down the pipeline. Have the procurement process that they're going to give us these dry we're going to we're going to stop using the CLP wipes and we're going to use these dry carbon pouches. So it's a dry lube that goes inside graphite, graphite, graphite. So we switched over to graphite. And this was somehow somebody was getting paid for this and we started using the graphite and then halfway through the rotation, they said, well, we're not using graphite anymore. We're going back to CLP wipes. So then now we have all these different clean parts and stuff floating around you have some guys using the carbon some guys using the CLP and it was a mess.
Mark :It was a real mess if you put that freakin graphite on after you and CLP Yes.
Matt :And then you had, yeah, we never had any major stoppages. What I will tell you is that it wasn't the best experience. Especially with a 240 there was some stoppages that I experienced with the 241 of them being at a very detrimental point where it was pretty bad. So I had to actually switch to my M4, and then kind of get the gun back up. But it just didn't work the way that it was. It was advertised
Eric :I always just felt like the SAWs, you know, from being stamped. Versus the milled construction of a 240. Like the 240 is just a far superior gun to the249.
Matt :Well, you just have a lot you have a lot more gas to propel it I mean, which is much more reliable. Yeah. Like you didn't really I mean, yes, they're both open bolt but I mean, to me the the stoppage rate on a on a 249 was significantly higher. Oh, gosh, yeah.
Eric :Yeah. They never really were known for their reliability. I
Matt :I would give you $100 if I can make it through a holdup. tell you that right now. Okay. So
Eric :So let's backtrack. Boy, I feel we we do He asked Mark about modern stuff so let's backtrack way way back okay, what what to you is the most considerable and important right now and I want everyone to just provide an answer I have my answer I think you have you probably your answer and I know Mark has a genius answer that's why I'm asking this question genius level what is the most important technological development that makes us have the guns we have today.
Mark :The self contained cartridge.
Eric :Where we where we are today.
Mark :The self contained cartridge.
Eric :I was gonna say the primer, but yeah,
Unknown Speaker :It all came together in a self contained cartridge. And that only took wow 20 years.
Eric :The modern primer
Unknown Speaker :Yeah, the modern primer emanates percussion ignition. Yes, that was the single the fact and also the realization that a brass cartridge will obturate it will blow up like a balloon, seal the rear end and then and then on swell and allow you to extract it. Okay, and once they figured out how to delay that extraction sequence again, John Moses Browning and Anyway, once they figured out how to do that, then it was KD bar the door. It was the self contained cartridge followed by smokeless powder. Yet followed by black powder does not have enough energy to get a projectile of any weight moving much faster than about 14-1500 feet per second. So if you can't go fast, you got to go big. So look at Naval gunnery before I'm going to call 1890 to two years smokeless came out. Naval guns were short and huge in the moment, the ability to continuously accelerate the projectile down the barrel came in. Now the Guns got real small in diamter and really long. Sure, look at Naval gunnery.
Eric :Yeah, there's just only so much you can do with black powder there kind of becomes like a point of no return where there's no you could you fill it all away exponential amount of white powder and you're never going to get any more
Unknown Speaker :velocity. It only deflagrates so fast. There's only so much here so I would say the self contained cartridge followed by, followed by smokeless powder sold the 8mm Lebel.
Eric :Yeah I'm sure it is smokeless powder see the thing is
Unknown Speaker :You put these bags on a Frenchman they've been there first and fastest with a lot of stuff from
Eric :From a military perspective on smokeless powder though yeah not only is important for the velocity gains that you get but also for revealing your position.
Mark :Trajectory and Flash yes.
Eric :You've got a group of guys and a wood line firing muskets and there's this huge cloud of smoke when now right enemy all of a sudden knows where everybody is right? But with smokeless it completely changed the game totally because a guy could be hiding in the woodland you have no idea where he is he just got hit with a high speed rifle bullet from long distance.
Unknown Speaker :It also increases ranges dramatically i can i can consistently hit a six foot diameter target at 1000 yards with my trap or Springfield firing 535 grain projectiles. However, there's 23 feet of mid course trajectory on that round and I hit better know where that target is within about 20 yards here or there where I want mess it in front of it or behind it with a Garand, I can lay back there all day and I'm off by 10 or 12 inches. So that velocity gave you the ability to get long for caliber projectiles that had all kinds of freaking sectional density that would hold the velocity down range better shoot flatter and all of a sudden combat range went from 100 yards to 1000.
Eric :Well And not only that, but there's also that window for your battle sight setting right was much wider range much especially like in the 6.5 Swedish right if I'm running the lowest sight setting on a six five will shoot so flat, yeah, I can get out the 400 and probably hit within a 12 inch circle of where I'm looking at even all the way up to 400 yards. So it actually increased the standoff distance of the battle site by having a smokeless powder.
Unknown Speaker :So consequently, lethality went up by several orders of magnitude and yeah, the first half of the Great War today which is the tality was.
Eric :Yeah, so what do you think that greatest achievement that brought us where we are today in the gun world?
Matt :Oh, I think you guys are talking down to the macro level about innovations as far as bullets and round right powder. I my brain automatically snaps to like the Gatling gun just because it's the mechanical nature of it and the way that it's affected the most volume firing gun rushing because I'm thinking like area denial, and I mean even today the most feared gun on the battlefield is not the Ma Deuce while it's the most effective, it's like the M134. Like M134 rolls on to the battlespace, you're, you're you're done
Mark :Yeah. How do you hit women and children?
Eric :Hear an A10 over here, man just
Matt :Sounds like snap caps going off. Have you ever heard it's just like you hear and then my little literally five seconds later, just snap cap small,
Unknown Speaker :Small factoid, the brass does not come out the back end of an A10 that could not figure out how to get rid of that many cases that fast. So the brass comes out of the gun and is put in the rear of the magazine. So the magazine depletes from the rear forward. And when you run out, you wind up with a mag full of empties.
Matt :Nice.
Unknown Speaker :They don't even come out of the airplane yet configured. I got you have one. I've got another one.
Eric :Well, no, I think that you and I actually wound up reaching the same conclusion. I was gonna say the metallic probably like the kind primer, the crystal controlled AM radio. The ability to communicate on the battlefield. Yeah,
Unknown Speaker :Yeah. And the crystal meant you didn't have to tune it. You snapped into a channel. Everybody's on Channel three. They got them great big walkie talkies, which was basically an enormous battery with a microphone on it. And then the ability to communicate. I mean to change war,
Eric :Think about stuff like sonar, Sonar It was a huge breakthrough. And then look at the Germans and using the magnetic Enigma device. Yeah, it's code messages like message coding and, and sonar, and radar and all of those things.
Unknown Speaker :All of these innovation things, you know, all of these innovations were paid for by the fact that we were shooting each other up. Let's think about the 1960s. Very briefly. We were fighting a war that was costing billions of dollars while we were engaged in the world's humankind's largest infrastructure improvement, the Eisenhower interstate system, while we started up Johnson's great, great society program, and in the middle of all that we went to the freakin moon and paid cash for all of it. And all of that money got us where we are now it got us to this cell phone is five times the computing power of the Apollo spacecraft.
Matt :And that's crazy.
Eric :You know, it's really random.
Mark :Think about it.
Eric :Yeah, it really is. Because if you think about the prosperity of the 50s, right, yeah, you know, my friends and yeah, the lady staying at home and a polka dot dress. Hey, how did school go today Rust? "It went fine dad," dinner ready and there's a car in every driveway.
Mark :Every woman was named Karen.
Matt :Karen Karen? No...
Mark :That was the dawn of the Karen it was in a world of Susan. Yes. Karen right. She's no longer just plain Jane
Matt :Use the name Rusty. I was gonna say Timmy because Timmy si the kind of.
Eric :This epic right time of prosperity. Yeah, yes. That that really the culmination of that was the space program. It really was.
Unknown Speaker :We did all four of those things at the same time and all the technology.
Eric :In two decades.
Unknown Speaker :Yeah, and all that right and all that money that got spent. So what did what did World War One give you improvements. weapon systems World War II gave you metallurgy. So just humor me here for a second. It took a million years to get from fire to the steam engine. It took 150 years to get from a steam engine to standing on a mode. So all of that was improvements in metallurgy. You went from engines that ran below atmospheric pressure, Watt's steam engine for pumping out mines ran below atmospheric pressure. So he put the steam in in order to condense it let the atmosphere push the piston down. So then by the time you started burning fuel inside, you're looking at the temperature rise and in that 40 year timespan between about 1890 and 1930. The metallurgist were blowing their brains out trying to keep up and then von Ohain and Whittle just declare the piston part of the internal combustion engine redundant and just burn the fuel. And then the Germans decided that all the rotating crap was redundant and just burn fuel and made a rocket. It. So went from engines that ran at 200 degrees Fahrenheit to 6000 degrees Fahrenheit in 60 years.
Eric :And that was that those improvements and metallurgy I mean, I think like it's interesting. I'll switch gears just a little bit. Okay. If John Alright, here's a great question. If John Browning were alive today, yes. Would he use polymer in his gun design? Hmm,
Unknown Speaker :Yes. Because it is a superior material as far as corrosion resistance is concerned. I'm telling you the accurate glasses available in the 1650s. It would be a traditional firearms material
Eric :What what what what areas in firearms technology with john browning utilize using Polymer?
Unknown Speaker :I think we do exactly with it what we're doing with it now he just makes stocks out of it because it reduces weight. Do you think he really wanted to make a gun that weighed 14 pounds? No. And every time we tried to make one that was lighter, didn't really work out. polymers are here because they are better I hate to say that you say modern cars have no soul. They're better. They're just better. Yeah, I think he would use polymer and I think he would use it all over the place and he would tell you what he would have loved to have had was access to the materials. We have the metals.
Eric :Oh man aluminum.
Matt :Yeah, not even that but just not like 904L like right having like that access to the formula for 904L would
Unknown Speaker :You go inside of a john browning engineered gun, you could make a 1911 weigh a lot less. Because he didn't have to have all of that then all the steel in it he had. You know what makes the 1911 a brilliant handgun. There are almost no parts in it. I mean, it's almost Russian in its simplicity. Everything does exactly what it's supposed to do no more and no less.
Eric :Well actually the Russians are simplistic because like if you look at the Tokarev they just copied a lot of the components from Browning and
Mark :Everybody copy everything and if you see a weird got to Around the 1890s is because they were trying to go around when Hiram Maxim's patterns. Holy crap.
Eric :Okay, well the Russians have always copied everything.
Mark :And they do it well to the Bad thing because really, honestly, seriously, if I gotta take one shotgun with me, it's gonna be an 870 if I got to take one rifle with me, it's going to be an AK47 Yeah, that's my opinion. Honest to God. If I got to take one handgun with me, it's probably going to be a 22 revolver.
Eric :Hmm So do you think Mickail Kalshnikov and you look at his contributions? The AK47. Do you think that his contributions were just him being in the right place at the right time and just thinking of the right idea? Like there's a lot of people that go Oh, well, he stole designs from the term governor or whatever, or do you think he was just brilliant enough to think hey, I'm gonna make one basic machine, one piston you know the moving thing he
Mark :went for? Every single thing he did both ends of everything he did does something. He went Simple it's got to be maintained on the step by someone that can't read under incoming fun got to be able to give a conscript 20 minutes of an I got a story man when and and people go well, you were in a submarine you never had bullets fired at you really the ocean was trying to kill me 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Okay, you need things that are simple and easy to operate. And every once in a while I'm coming back around to your initial question. All these weapon systems suck because they're too complicated. And you go right back to Mikhail Kalashnikov and he got it. Right. That's my opinion. So I vote him for best gun. A lot of people gonna yell at me. 1911 is the best handgun in my opinion. However, the ammunition weighs a lot and the reason why I want a 22 revolver is because handgun is the last thing you go to. And I want ammunition that doesn't weigh much I can carry a lot of it and it has all the basic qualifications of money. It's small for its value. It it's easily subdividable. It's very recognizable and you know, six rounds of 22 to buy me a loaf of bread in a pinch.
Eric :It's a good point.
Mark :That's where I'm at. You know, everybody thinks when the boog comes, they're going to load, you know, all 5000 rounds and all 30 weapons they have into their vehicle, it gets 12 miles to the gallon, and they're gonna go out there and kick some butt. No. So anyway, that's where I'm at. I'm rambling. No, you're not what I'm trying to come back around and we're self contained cartridge, smokeless powder. And, yeah, and then guys, that kept it simple. You want a simple gun? SVT-40.
Eric :Yeah, they're cool. And they have fluted chamber, which is Oh, yeah, yeah, fluted chamber, Chrome lining. I looked at it
Mark :And we tried to make automatic, bad idea.
Eric :Yeah, World War II principles. The only thing the things that I consider is okay, did the Finns use it? Answer? Yes. Yes. All right, then. probably good.
Mark :If the Finns or the US Marines could keep it alive. That's what you want.
Eric :Yeah, I mean, that that's Honestly, the question, if Finland used it more war to write probably good, you're probably Gore, that base technology within that gun platform is something that is certainly good, right? And there's a lot of examples of that in this room.
Matt :There are well, the Russian mindset during that time was that everything had a purpose. And if it didn't have a purpose, it didn't.
Mark :Why is it here? Why have we burned fuel and rubber and trucks to drag it all the way up to the frontline? Why have we done that, right?
Matt :So everything has a purpose, and everything has to have a payoff. You don't do anything without it, giving you a service or providing a purpose for it. And I think I shared that story with you, Eric, about how the American space program spent over a million dollars to create this Fisher space pen, right. And the astronauts flew up to the space station and they were, they were just showing up like, oh man, look at this amazing pen. It cost us a million dollars in development and it works in space, and the Russians just pull a pencil out and go. Why don't you use pencil?
Mark :Now I will tell you now.
Matt :It costs less to get up there. It was already in development, it was practically free. And these guys are just looking at these American astronauts like, oh, he was he spent a million dollars.
Mark :And there is there is there is more to that. There is more to that.
Matt :But that's just this is a story.
Mark :When you sharpen a pencil you make very conductive graphite dust and they actually had issues with that in their spacecraft, however, yeah, we were using such high tech stuff as computers, these stabilizer spacecrafts, all of theirs are spun like a bullet. You see any pictures of a Soviet spacecraft that's going around very slowly, because it's actually being spin stabilized and are ours. They got up there first.
Matt :They did it. Well then, like I said, everything they did was had a purpose.
Mark :Everything we did had a purpose.
Eric :Yes and there there was no value for the individual human life. was considerably significant less significantly
Matt :Significanty less we agree
Eric :What we assigned to the value of human life right? Yeah, they were completely willing to kill anybody they need to kill you know?
Mark :Yeah ,and you know it's they've chosen to set this most recent little kerfuffle out so anyway that's that's who they are. I never I will tell you what having been privy to how they played the submarine game they are very worthy adversaries.
Eric :So let's talk a little bit about that mark, if we can your submarine surface so I know you and I offline if spoken on many accounts about some of the things that you you know the the lifestyle of living in a submarine. I mean, you earlier you mentioned Yeah, everything around you is trying to kill you The ocean is deadly if that vessel fails. There's many life support systems that have to maintain you either what oxygen scrubbers, water purification There's
Mark :There's 3000 rolling all these things around, there's 3000 pound hydraulics, 4500 pound air, you have steam. Oh, let's not forget that, you know, over 100 million watt reactor that's just happened to be sitting in there and right there's everything yeah, it's it's just to make oxygen you electrolytically decompos water into hydrogen and oxygen inside a machine that runs at very high pressure. And at the oxygen and hydrogen recombine, you understand why several years call that thing the bomb. There's everything there. There was a battery in that ship. That is the size of the room we're sitting in. There's four of them. There's just it's a very, very intense environment that does not suffer fools gladly. You didn't walk around going, Oh my god, I'm going to die. You walk around going Thank God. There's 100 other guys on his boat that have a clue. Because actuarily I was more endangered driving to the base than I was was going to see on the boat
Matt :That's a good way to look at it.
Mark :It's like going it's like going in country with 25 or 30 guys in a squad that all get it, you're safer there.
Eric :That's true right but there's no dumb luck in that boat if all right if I'm an infantry men and I forget to clean my rifle and I have a minor stoppage and I just need to clear the stoppage and get my mind back in order that's one thing but out there the training disposition you must be on your A game because all everyone is relying on a well oiled machine.
Mark :So there is really different working there is an ethos down there that does not exist up in the civilian world where if you make a mistake, the first thing you do is you tell every single person within earshot that you did it. Now if you do that up here, there are societal consequences you'll get, you know, you'll get screwed over but down there if you make a mistake, the first thing you do is you tell the whole boat you made the mistake. Then the other 99 guys cover free and it doesn't matter. You just move on it happens but you don't Don't do something wrong and I tell somebody you did it wrong or it will kill all of you.
Eric :And there are no secrets in the submarine all the way down to flatulence. No, there are no the guys fired all the way in the front.
Mark :The first time you fart, we have to smell it for three months. The I will tell you this. There's over 600 tons of AC in a nuclear submarine. Wow. Very good. There's an activated charcoal bed. There's a burner that burns all the methane so when you fart, it just turns it by back into water vapor. And there is a scrubber that scrubs all the co2 out of the air. But you have to have the burner in order to hide the battery gives off hydrogen. So there's all kinds of stuff and at the end of the day, you come back off a tour and your wife will not allow you in the house because you smell like we called it metal oxide breath.
Eric :Very small because Your submarine is ablitic it's nine pounds of crap stuffed into a two pound box. Okay, it's not a very big thing. So you're sleeping container is called your rack. It's about two and a half feet wide. It's just a little over six feet long and it's about 18 to 18 inches tall and that's where you get to sleep. So crew comfort is definitely not the point I
Mark :No, the boat. Yeah, pretty much it's the weapons and the engines pushing it and then the people are just kind of a vestigal Oh, we'll squeeze them in where we can.
Eric :Now what about like, you know food preparation chow hall, I mean any decent area to move around like well rec room or anything like that
Mark :The entire crews mess is the size of this room. So this is about 100 men, it says no you eat and shifts. So this is about an 18 by 18 room if I'm not too far off. This is the this is the largest open space inside the submarine except for engine room upper level where you could see 30 or 40 feet but you couldn't walk that far. So yeah, there's not a lot of open space. Everything's done in shifts. You don't have enough bunks on that bed to sleep 100 guys so the junior guys, you'll have three guys for two racks. So whenever you come off watch you go to sleep in a bed that's had somebody in it 10 minutes ago it's called hot racking. You never get in a bunk with cool sheets in it. That's called hot racking. Yeah.
Eric :They actually have shifts for even who gets to sleep?
Mark :Where you sleep and when and your racks are assigned. And yeah, and
Eric :Well, they got to have somebody up to like check on system while there's
Mark :A third of the crew up at all times. The boat runs on three, three watches. So you'll go six on 12 off six on 12 off so you're always getting up to a different meal. So you get up to breakfast, mid rats, dinner, lunch, breakfast, mid rats, dinner, lunch, you're going backwards. So you're going backwards. Now I did hear this heinous, but it is what we did.
Matt :What now the I did hear one of the benefits of being on a on as part of the silent service as they say is the Chow. They said the Chow is amazing.
Mark :The Chow was good for the first seven to eight days. But the problem is, is that after seven to eight days, the first thing that happens is the cow dies. So you run out of milk, and then they put this container you bring about maybe 15 or 20 of these great big cardboard boxes and milk will drink all that hundred guys will drink that in about 10 days. And then they put a box of plastic milk in there and stays there for the rest of the patrol because it's heinous. It's ugly, it's terrible. It just
Eric :Like powdered milk
Mark :It ain't like powdered milk, it is powdered milk, we call it plastic milk. And then of course, you'll run out of vegetables and eggs and then you're down to eating meat and potatoes and butter and bread. So you eat a lot of bread, a lot of meat and a lot of potatoes and you look like a freakin termite.
Eric :How is it How is waste handled? I guess it gets pumped out to sea
Mark :That just gets blown overboard. You get out into the beach and you see Don't worry about drinking fish piss. I wouldn't worry about it. It's just now here's the problem.
Eric :Just jettison the waste out.
Mark :Yeah, just pump just pump it out in the ocean. There's nothing in it. It's great water. It's bathwater it's it's crap, but you know everything in the sea's crap and there's a couple hundred million quadrillion gallons of water on the ocean. I don't think anybody noticed. Oh, yeah, I'm sure you put everything in a tank and then when you're ready to blow the tank, you push you you either blow it overboard with air, you push it overboard with the pump, you pump the sanitary tank and then everything drains into that and it goes off.
Eric :So when it comes to you look at aircraft, right, right. Look at the fact that there's are multiple redundancies for every system usually with aircraft, submarines.
Mark :Two, two redundancy redundancies, there's and things are only redundant if they both work. So there's a 100% up requirement if you got a piece of gear down because it's broke. You are limiting the ship's ability to perform combat because I don't care how big your budget is, I don't care how big your op tire is, I don't care how many spare parts you think you got, you only got so much room 1400 miles out in the middle of damn Atlantic. So you have limited options because of where you are and what you're doing.
Eric :If a pump or component goes out, you switch to the backup and then you repair the broken component right you repair, you get it back up to full redundancy.
Mark :I'm I'm guarding my words here because I don't know what is still guarded and what isn't, but you have an equipment rotation that guarantees that the entire boats going to wear out at the same time. As opposed to say run one thing till it dies. Then switch over the other one to repair the other one. When you get around to it. You run this one, that one, this one, that one, this one, that one, this one and if one if one of them breaks, you have got both eyes looking at the other one. Now you do a lot of preventative maintenance. You've got 100 guys on a boat. All we did was maintenance and clean and stand watch and I'm telling you what it is 100 hour weeks.
Eric :And I would probably imagine lots of lots of drills too while you're out.
Mark :You got to do drills because the problem is submarine is that three quarters of the drills once they begin their actual casualties, because you're 400 feet underwater, and you've just shut the reactor down for a drill. What kind of socks, so you gotta go deal with that. So it ceases to be a drill. But you got to do it because you got to know how to get a firehose rig from it from two different places in the boat to anywhere in the boat under two minutes, or you'll die because there'll be no more oxygen.
Eric :Well think about Chernobyl. That started from a drill.
Mark :No Chernobyl started from a bunch of being people being stupid.
Eric :Yeah, but the whole idea is it was supposed to be a drill at first.
Mark :Yeah, they were being stupid. They didn't understand what happens when you add that much positive reactivity to a reactor that's that poorly designed and it blew the entire top off the damn thing and flipped it over upside down.
Eric :Well, I think that it's also an exercise in just because you can try to make something cheaper doesn't mean you should know that because those reactors fat has some clear faults in them.
Mark :Your'e not allowed to build an VMK reactor and I'm going to tell you I think I got that acronym right but I'm drinking a bit of scotch here but you're not even allowed to build one of those things outside of the old communist Park. You're not in a lot of them because they're not safe. So you know, you look we did melt Three Mile Island down, it melted and it's still inside of its containment building. Primary containment hell, they didn't even need secondary containment. Look up the elephant's foot and you'll see what I'm talking about because the fuel meat from that reactor melted out the bottom of the pressure vessel through the secondary containment and into the freakin local groundwater and it is the most radioactive place in the universe and it's on this planet.
Eric :Yep, we do. That place makes the sun look like it's bothering me kind of they kind of created a tiny sun. In a sense, they built a sarcophagus around it, but the concern.
Mark :No they built this around the top of around the main building which is still contaminated.
Eric :So do you think the groundwater is contaminated?
Mark :Not yet, but I'll tell you what the main fuel load at Three Mile Island is still inside the primary containment and is going nowhere. The main fuel load at Fukushima is still inside its primary containment and is going nowhere. That main fuel load at Chernobyl is 75 feet under the secondary containment and melting its way towards the center of the earth. Leave it to the Russians.
Eric :Yes, send me records you mentioned Fukushima. Yes. I know that there was a lot of concern about radioactive radioactive material being jettison into the ocean.
Mark :Again do the dilution refers to the dilution numbers. The ocean doesn't know what's there. It doesn't it's not there. It's it's if you actually do the numbers, no, no. And you know what, you know what the real thing was, they Did they chose to remove decay heat from those reactors by using seawater, and therefore they condemned them to death by putting chlorides inside the primary, and then they let that water go back out into the ocean, it doesn't matter, it went away, it's gone. You won't find it. And they prevented those cores from melting out of their containment vessels. The Japanese did a jam up job of handling that, jam up.
Eric :I do think that it's amazing that they had, you know, literal prisoners from jail that were volunteering to go in hand, right, knowing very well, right that they could die. Right. And many of them did.
Mark :And yet you don't hear Japan squaring it off because it's the only there's only two kinds of energy available on this planet solar and nuclear.
Eric :Alright, so we are getting relatively close on time. But one thing I want to mention, yes. All right. So in light of this conversation that has occurred here, yes. Okay. Nuclear, okay. Nuclear energy. Yes. What do you think is the most significant and important technological events that have occurred in relation nuclear energy like, are we are we better as a as a planet because of its existence? Or is are we doomed?
Mark :While we're much better? You have to look at it in terms of the fuel that they're burning is already here. It's already in the crust of the earth. We are not consuming stored sunlight, which is what dinosaur whiz is. Okay, dinosaur poop and dinosaur Wiz is colon oil, right? Okay, we only have so much that it's stored sunlight. Nuclear produces a lot of power for what it consumes to produce it. You burn a lot of oil building a nuclear power plant. Now the biggest advance I would say, we got to do it the way the French do it. The French took one reactor and did it several hundred times. We took several hundred designs and did them once. So what the French have is what the nuclear Navy has is a very large pool of qualified talent that all know the same thing. Okay. I and it's and they have initiative, but the deal is this, you get they move around, we moved around in the military in order to keep the knowledge pool from stagnating right. Same deal there. They move people around. And everybody knows the same thing that we did that here in the United States, we would be much, much better off. I really believe that. Right. I mean, that's what I see it as because it's an energy source. It's available on a planet. We might as well use it because we're going to run on a stored sunlight one of these days.
Matt :All right, I agree. Yeah,
Mark :I just it's, I have an opinion on it. I taught mechatronics in high school.
Eric :Okay, so what time are we currently at? In terms of nuclear holocaust? What time is it?
Mark :Oh, we backed away. Most of the stuff that the Russians had maintaining a nuclear weapon is not a five second evolution requires a very large infrastructure that fell apart. They may have put it back together again, but they had no way they didn't. Now, it world war three is going to start it's going to be India and China.
Eric :Alright, so out of all the major superpowers on the planet right now. Yeah. Who is nuclear capable right now in terms of delivering a devastating payload to a major developed country,
Mark :Us, China, the Soviet Union, former Soviet Socialist Republics, they can still deliver credible, the Indians, the Pakistanis, the Israelis, France, Great Britain can. There's a lot of there's a lot of people that can pull the trigger. Countries with the political will to do it, China.
Matt :I think you would even know nuclear weapon period are on the table. I think with the advancements in small arms technology, you can actually achieve a lot more By, you know small unit tactics. I mean, well there's you can insert teams that will do much more damage than a nuclear well, nuclear blast.
Mark :You're right and consider this. You can put a 10 to 15 kiloton nuclear weapon through your front door from 1100 miles away, and they're using b 52. For close air support. Yeah. Holy crap. We're right back to that. Okay. GPS again.
Matt :technically, I mean, those missiles are holding six warheads apiece. They're there.
Mark :They don't have to come down at this.
Matt :Yeah, they're hidden six different Cz
Mark :Nuclear lock. No, we're not five that we're not five to midnight anymore. Yeah, the closest we were was right before the Russians came apart in 87/88. And then we started we got inside their head and started living rent free between their ears. And we just do Ronald Reagan should go down in history is doing the one thing that the Russians couldn't do, which was spend money we didn't have,
Eric :You know, it is interesting to look at it from the perspective that it is a mental war just as much as a physical war and it's the war of the mind is something that is probably the hardest fault war, but sometimes the easiest one, you know, getting people to think in your way, you know. So, look, Mark, I would definitely take a moment to thank you so much for being on our podcast we've reached about our limit on the timeframe here right on I definitely want to, you know, tell everybody look, go follow amble gunsmithing
Mark :My YouTube channel is Mark Novak, right now.No, I haven't. I'm gonna I'm going to rename it to that. I used to be on another channel. We've moved over now and I'm running and bringing this stuff back and I really appreciate your time. And if you will want me back light light Eric up, and maybe I'll drive back here or maybe I'll drag him down to Charleston. We'll go from there.
Eric :I think that we will come to you for the next batch. Okay, now I'm gonna I'm gonna take a moment here to read a little bit of a monologue from one of my favorite films related To the Cold War and related to the whole communist scare, and that is a Stanley Kubrick film by the name of Dr. Strangelove. Okay, so we're going to end with this all right, "the survival kit contents check, 1 45 automatic, two boxes of ammunition, four days concentrated emergency rations, one drug issue containing antibiotics, morphine, vitamin pills, pep pills, sleeping pills, tranquilizer pills, one miniature combination Russian phrase book and Bible, $100 and ruples, $100 in gold, nine packs of chewing gum, one issue of prophylactic, three lipsticks, one pair of nylon stockings, shoot, a fella could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas with all that stuff." All right.
Matt :I love the southern drawl. You put on this I declare
Mark :That is, that was Yeah.
Eric :Alright guys, thank you so much for tuning into this podcast. Mark, thank you for being on our podcast. Thank you, Mark. We will have other guests on. Let us know if you like this format. And Mark, thank you very much for joining us.
Mark :It's been great.
Eric :All right, I get your sound. Thanks for listening to life liberty and pursuit. If you enjoyed the show, be sure to subscribe on Apple podcasts, Spotify, and anywhere else podcasts are found. Be sure to leave us a five star review we'd really appreciate that. You can support us over on ballistic ink by picking yourself up some merch and remember guys dangerous freedom . Have a good one. Transcribed by https://otter.ai