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ZERT Coffee & Chaos 146 – Tyranny Doesn’t Announce Itself: Iran, Civil Chaos, and Why the Second Amendment Matters
22 Jan 2026
Chapter 1: What are the implications of civil unrest in Iran?
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Welcome back to the Zert Coffee and Chaos podcast, the show where we talk about anything and everything relating to what it means to be a survivalist and a prepared individual in today's society. I'm your host, Chris Bartagon, ZP002. Back with me on the show today is somebody new. It's the director of punctuation, Jamie Franks. Welcome back to the show. Thank you. Jamie, comma, how are you today?
Question mark. that's proper punctuation right there, man. I'm good. Um, good. Uh, so it's funny. Okay, folks. So this show that we are recording, um, and you are going to hear, uh, next week or when you're hearing it, it was recorded a week ago. And right before we hopped on to do this show, we've actually been sitting in the studio here for about 10 minutes. And, uh,
Somebody reached out to me and said, hey, call me. I can't make a phone call. My phone's acting weird. I just had another friend of mine who's not into this survivalist thing, but he reached out to me. He was like, hey, I can't make any phone calls right now. What's going on is the grid down. Um, and so we're sitting here, my internet's up. That's fine.
Jamie reminded me that his is in his internet's up, which is why we can do our podcast, but, and his, he, Jamie, you're on Verizon. I'm on Verizon. My phone right now is in SOS mode.
Yep. Yeah. Mine seems to be fine, but when I tried to call you, it would not work. It told me that you were unavailable.
Which is interesting because prior to that, now, maybe because I'm on Wi-Fi calling, I'm able to make phone calls. But, you know, we talk about this all the time, folks. And like I said, this is a show about survivalism and preparedness. We talk about our emergency plan. We talk about what activates that plan. And one of the things is something like this, right?
When your ability to communicate goes down. Now, This you can do a quick search of the Internet and Verizon has reported a problem right now. But if you try to go and search the Internet to find out if this is a problem and then there's no Internet. I don't know. Does that does that make things a little bit more interesting on your side, Jamie? Do you do you grab the loaded mags?
I was just like that movie blast from the past where they like run to the bunker and seal themselves in for 20 years or whatever it is.
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Chapter 2: How does the Second Amendment protect against tyranny?
Like, I don't think it's time to do that. But, you know, we've talked about before, like kind of. Your preset triggers, if you will, of of when you should start activating your emergency plan that I hope you have. And this would certainly be. kind of a yellow flag that I would start paying more attention. If a major cell phone carrier is going down, has it gone down nationwide?
Is it just in my area? Like you said, I can take to Google. I can search and see what the... scope of the outages then if internet goes down then if tv goes down then you know if airlines get grounded like you know all of those things even if we don't i mean is there a meteor headed towards earth is there uh you know or Are Russian paratroopers going to start falling out of the sky?
We don't know. But when these things start happening, those are indicators. I mean, so this is a this is the very first very small yellow flag that would just make me start paying attention to other things. I would start paying attention to, like I said, the airlines, like mass transit things, the stock market, if I didn't say that already. Yeah.
And things like that, because those are all indicators that something's happening that the proverbial they don't want us to know about yet.
But pieces are starting to move around the board when they start shutting down mass transit and public transportation, when they're starting to do things that aimed at keeping people where they are, shutting down communication, shutting down transportation, shutting down... Broadcasting and shutting down, you know, financial things.
But this is a good little, you know, exercise the muscle, get people to pay attention. Like, hey, my phone's down. Who else's phone's down? You know, if Verizon is down, is AT&T down? Is it nationwide? Is it regional?
Yeah. So anyway, folks. I'm sure by this time, when you guys hear this, all is well, and I have not moved to a remote cabin in the woods with my dog and select few people, but it is something cool to pay attention to.
Me and Alicia Silverstone are headed to the bunker.
What?
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Chapter 3: What parallels exist between protests in the U.S. and Iran?
As you know, if you are new here or if you are not, our shows go out on Thursdays on Spotify and the Apple podcast through the Firearms Radio Network. So thank you for joining and listening to us today. hopefully by this time next week, um, we are not in a full on squabble with, uh, with Iran. Um, because that shit's going crazy over there. Um,
I mean, and, you know, we didn't really have a topic for today, but this kind of just formed. And there's been some interesting things that I have seen throughout my purviewing of YouTube and the news today. You know, the situation with ICE and these protesters... Is insane. Right.
But one of the things, and I'm, and I, I guess I didn't realize it until today when I listened to Tom Holman talk, I didn't realize that Minneapolis is a sanctuary city. Were you aware of this?
I mean, if. I cannot say that I was aware of it, but I mean, if you, if, if I was on cash cab and you asked me to name 10 sanctuary cities, I probably would name that as a guess, but.
Okay. Yeah. Um, I could tell you, I think the only thing I remember from Minneapolis is, um, it was like, where, from where Prince was from. Um, and, uh, and I once did a firearm show there. That's about it. Um, but yeah, They showed videos of these people, these protesters that are always outside of this detention center. Hmm.
And I got to tell you, it looks like the fucking video that I watched in Iran today of all of these people in the streets and our ICE officers dressed in full fatigue riot gear throwing flashbangs out on the streets of Minneapolis. I'm like, what is happening right now? Why are these people so... How about that?
How come they're so fucking unemployed that they stand outside a detention center for 26 hours a day, nine days a week in gas mask yelling at ICE?
I don't know. This is where this is such a weird little thing. chapter in whatever story we're currently living out. And the thing that bothers me the most about all of this, and it's like twice this week, I mean, as we're recording this, today's Wednesday, and I've already had these two weird conversations with two of my close friends where a questionable white cop
shoot some dumb white chick in Minneapolis, but like somehow this is about race again, and which I don't understand. And, and the conversation turned to, uh, racism and policing and white privilege. And I'm like, but it, it was a white cop that shot a white chick. Why is, what does race have anything to do with this? And then like, of course, then, uh,
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Chapter 4: How does the erosion of the rule of law affect society?
So anyway, the hypocrisy of this whole situation is what's getting, I know, I know, I know.
Hold on. But you, but your point is, is logical. Their rebuttal to that will be, well, you did it, so now we can do it. I didn't do anything. I don't mean you as you, Jamie Franks. I mean you as their definition. That's what their rebuttal is going to be. It's the fucking playbook that they're given. They must be given a playbook.
If you did something, if the right did something that we hated back then, And then we do it later on. Instead of us being called out and wrong for it, now we can just say, well, you did it, so we did it. It's like fucking dealing with a three-year-old.
It's like when you flip a coin and you say, heads I win, tails you lose. But yeah, that's to both of my friends who both told me that I'm failing to understand the gravity of the situation because of my white privilege or whatever. I mean, to them, I was like, but you can either...
The two situations that are happening, January 6th and this, I personally think they are very much parallel and they're very similar. And either they are both insurrections or neither one of them are or both of these police shootings were bad or they're both good. But you can't you can't like to me, you expose yourself when you claim that one is good and one is bad.
I am against I think I think January 6th was dumb the whole time. protest and riot and I think the anti-ice protests are dumb I personally don't think the shooting of this chick in Minneapolis was necessarily good justified use of deadly force and I don't think shooting Ashley Babbitt was justified use of deadly force like so like I told one of my friends like if you're
if you're against both of these situations, then you're honest and smart. If you're for both of these situations, you're honest and dumb. And if you're for one and against the other, you're dishonest and dumb. But yeah, that's my opinion.
Okay, so I don't really agree as much or align with you as much on thinking that January 6th and this situation are... I mean, they're similar, but they're similar. Like saying an apple and an orange are both fruits. They're not the same. They both live in that family. But this ice thing is an ongoing thing.
in multiple different cities trying to stop a federal agency from doing the tasks that they are, uh, supposed to be doing the mostly peaceful protest, insurrection, whatever the fuck you want to call it on January 6th was, was just, you know, people being mad because Donald Trump was no longer president. Um, uh, you know, again, same thing. Like, uh, you could have told me that back then.
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Chapter 5: What warning signs indicate governmental overreach?
You've got a bunch of military-dressed ICE officers, and they're just literally dropping flashbangs and concussion devices or concussive devices out on these streets. And these...
protesters are just sitting there in i mean and they've smartened up these fucking dolts they wear now they now wear goggles and they wear gas masks and helmets and earmuffs to stop from being fucking pepper made or pepper sprayed or maced in the face all day long um i'm gonna fun tip here guys you know how else you can stop getting maced and pepper sprayed go to work go and clock in at the local
And you can go to work. You can make some crunch wrap Supremes, get a paycheck and stay out of it. Judy Smith, 37 of fucking Boise, Ohio. Like, you know what I mean? Like, that's your point. It's middle-aged white women that are going to fight for the illegal immigrants that are being deported. It's just, it's insane. But the shit that's happening in Iran is,
I mean, I guess that's level up, right?
Yeah, I would say so. Yeah, they're... They are either currently or about or, you know, imminently about to be hanging people in the streets. And they and like I heard this morning, I heard on the news report this morning.
It was an Associated Press news report that said that there has been like a, you know, Iran has blacked out the Internet, you know, to our original point at the top of the show so that Iran. pictures and videos and stuff can't get out, but, um, that, you know, within the last 24 to 48 hours, there's been a mass killing of, of protesters.
Um, that is that people, I guess people that are over there or whatever, people are saying that it's like the biggest one that there has ever been, like in 30 years or whatever, since, uh, that, uh, That however long the current regime in Iran has been in power, this is their their single largest like killing of demonstrators. And like you said, I guess they're about to do more.
And and then, you know, our president has warned them not to do that or we would intervene. So that's interesting.
Right. And just kind of going to back that up, yes, they're talking about public hangings. There's been two numbers being reported about the amount of civilians that have been killed. Anywhere from 2,600, which they say is a little bit more reality, but then the other two numbers are between 12,000 and 20,000 people that have been killed.
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Chapter 6: How can individuals prepare for potential civil chaos?
many decades at this point. And if I lived in a place like that, would I be laying in my bed at night and praying that somebody would step in and check? I don't have the ability to, to change this myself other, you know, then there's the French resistance model where you take, you, you build a homemade gun with one little 22 caliber bullet in it.
And then you, you kill a soldier and now you have his gun. Then you use that gun to kill another soldier. And now you've got two people with guns and now two people kill two more soldiers. And now you've got four guns, but, um, But by and large, the population, they've kind of been beaten into submission and systematically disarmed over a long period of time.
And if I lived in a place like that and I did not have the means to affect a meaningful resistance, would I hope for somebody to come in and lend a hand? The answer is yes. But I don't know how we would
effectively be able to... Without doing a full-on invasion of Iran and actually putting American troops on the ground there, which I would not necessarily be in favor of, I don't know what kind of strategic level or even tactical level standoff weapon we could use to help this situation along. This is a weird, volatile, deep-rooted situation Um, that's, that's kind of like a, a civil war issue.
I don't like, you know, when we, when we strive, I forget that there was a cool name for the operation and now I can't think of it, but when we use the stealth bombers to bomb their nuclear, uh, weapon plant a few months ago, uh, that's a perfect example of what I'm talking about is that here's this problem. We have this smart weapon. That's a solution. Bing, bang, boom, we're done.
And that, that problem is fixed. I don't see, I don't know of any, um, tourniquet that we can, any kind of, like I said, any standoff smart weapon that we can employ, uh, surgically, if you will, to really help this messy of a, of a situation that's on the ground level, you know?
Yeah. Now I think that is right. And I think maybe that might be a common misconception. Like, you know, the movies have told us in the past where you just send Chuck Norris and the Delta force boys down and, and they, and they roll in and they, they take care of situations like this.
Well, I don't think that's the, like you said, like in order for us to get involved, it would be a full scale thing. Right? Like, that's how the military would have to get involved here. It would be an act of war to attack... To try and restore order.
I mean, yeah, because I mean, the only like it was Operation Midnight Hammer, by the way, that was to bomb the Iranian nuclear sites a few months ago. But yeah, I mean, short of if we could if we employed some sort of weapon or some sort of special operations team or something that could go in and like assassinate the the. the high level leadership of Iran.
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Chapter 7: What role does media play in shaping public perception of protests?
But the way it's going to be couched is like no matter what President Trump does or what he tries to do, they are going to oppose it, period. And they're going to they're going to find some way. I said it the other day that if if President Trump. personally, you know, endorsed some project that resulted like as of tomorrow, cancer was cured. The problem they would have a problem with it.
And there would be that while you're encroaching on the civil rights of the people who who enjoyed having cancer and whose lives were made better by having cancer. And so you're you know, you're a fascist for trying to eliminate all the cancer. You're a cancerist.
Um, and so, but, um, I think that's, that's what it's going to be that no matter what he does or doesn't, if he doesn't do anything, they're going to be against that. And if he does something, they're going to be against whatever he does. And that is unfortunate.
Uh, that is, that is very unfortunate. Um, you know, going back to what you, but what you said, and I I'll be the first to tell you that I'm, I'm torn on the situation. Um, or at least our potential involvement, right? We just had to go get involved and help Israel fight its battle, right? We just got involved.
Not really. I mean, we supported their fight against Hamas, which I'm, again, me personally, I'm more than okay with that. But I mean, we didn't send them... troops or, you know, anything like that. I mean, we, we helped them, uh, re their little iron dome system, iron dome system. We sent them like the, the, what they needed to basically like reload it.
Their, their iron dome system was like running out of ammo was like running out of missiles. So we sent them like a, a refill on that.
But, um, we also dropped some bombs on their behalf to, uh,
the close to getting uh nuclear grade weapons remember that was a few remember remember we were last year when we were we were everyone was like we're now at war with country x because we bombed them we dropped we dropped a couple of bombs on a on a nuclear that was in iran though that wasn't gaza yeah i know but that was the talk back then because they were in cahoots, right?
Iran was in cahoots with, with Gaza and Hamas. They were going to step in. Yeah. So they were going to step in and we had to drop the bombs to stop. And then we, and remember we were last year, it was, Oh, now we're at war. And then, Oh, no, it's week three of not being at world war three with Iran. Like, so, but we did that. We did that during that skirmish.
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Chapter 8: What lessons can be learned from history regarding freedom and security?
Right. And you also have to assume that the president of the United States is aware of things that we aren't privy to, that as I sit here recording this podcast, he knows things that I don't. He gets intelligence briefs. He understands. When I say him, I'm like the president, his cabinet, his advisors, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Pentagon, all that.
They have access to the unfiltered information. real-world raw data, if you will. They understand the implications of these things better than I do. I'll press the I believe button on that one. Iran, I think most people think Iran is kind of like a boogeyman. Iran's military is really a piece of shit. It's like they... all of their weapons are old and antiquated.
And I mean, some of their stuff, they, they got it from Russia, but even that stuff is old and antiquated technology. Um, they don't, their military isn't really that big in size. Uh, you know, they do have some submarines, but again, their submarines are like old piece of shit submarines.
Um, I always point people towards operation praying mantis, which was a little skirmish that we had with Iran in 1988, where basically, uh, within 24 to 36 hours, we basically decimated Iran's entire Navy. And all we lost was like one helicopter.
Um, so, I mean, but before that, you had the, the, the Iran Contra affair. I mean, that was like the big, when I was growing up, I remember, like, I remember hearing that on the news all the time, like during, we were trying to Oliver North, trying to funnel weapons to Iranian revolutionaries.
Yeah. Um, but, um, That was us basically trying to coax them into starting their own civil war. I guess it never kicked off. The only thing I was going to say is to the best of my knowledge, to what I know, Iran doesn't have an operational nuclear weapon. Again, we just took further steps to prevent that from happening. However, I suppose there is some sort of
small percentage of a chance that they got a nuclear weapon from, from Russia or the, you know, the former Soviet union, whatever. I mean, they might be in possession of a small nuclear weapon of, you know, uh, like,
In the wake of the fall of the Soviet Union, I always heard about all these backpack nukes that went missing in the dust that was settling, and maybe some of those made their way to Iran. And Iran is crazy enough, if they are in possession of a capability like that, they are crazy enough to use it. And so that's...
I think if we wanted to do where I'm going with this, if we wanted to do some sort of military invasion against Iran, I don't really think it would take a whole lot. Um, I think it, it would basically be like 1988 where we, we just grenades. Yep. We steamroll them. And, and the, you know, it'd be like operation desert storm. And in 1991, like the war would be over in a hundred hours. Um,
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