Lawyer. Passport. Locksmith. Gun. (A Talk About Risk & Preparedness)
Why Hacker News recommends it
Recommended as a thorough preparedness talk, and cited for specifics such as lawyers, password managers and gun ownership.
What it is
Deviant Ollam gives a long talk on risk and preparedness: get a lawyer, passport, locksmith and other resources before you need them. It covers practical steps to build defenses against serious problems in life.
Recommended by 2 HN commenters across 2 different months, 2023 to 2025.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec myself248 · 2023-06 · on “Ask HN: What do you put in a “in case of death” file?”
Deviant Ollam recently did a talk covering this, entitled "lawyer, passport, locksmith, gun. a talk about risk and preparedness". [this video] I don't have a tl;dr, but it's worth an hour of your time.
Recommends _rs · 2023-03 · on “FCC orders phone companies to block scam text messages”
Yeah, 100% this. Deviant Ollam talks about something like this (though maybe a bit more high stakes (maybe not)) in his talk here about risk preparedness I found really interesting: [this video]
Cites zhengyi13 · 2024-01 · on “How to deal with receiving a cease-and-desist letter from Big Tech”
Depending on whose advice you value, Deviant Ollam has a video on YouTube entitled "Lawyer, Passport, Locksmith, Gun"[1] where he makes the argument that yeah, you probably should have a lawyer as part of a broader personal risk-reduction strategy. (I understand folk might take particular issue with that last as part of "risk reduction", but I hope that doesn't detract from the earlier parts of the strategy) [1]: [this video]
Cites V__ · 2025-01 · on “”
> The White House strikes out at gender ideology and pronouns. Also: ends housing of biological men in women’s prisons For anyone wondering how this will hurt people (even more), I recommend looking up Kara Sternquist. Deviant Ollam had a talk going into it [1] and posted a recent update [2]. [1] [this video] [2] [LINK]
Cites 01HNNWZ0MV43FF · 2025-02 · on “Nontraditional Red Teams”
> So someone on your team should use a password manager. I mean, you all should, of course Yeah, everyone who has any kind of online account should! It's number one on Ollam's preparedness checklist. [this video]
Cites toomuchtodo · 2025-03 · on “GSA Eliminates 18F”
~120 firearms for every 100 citizens? [LINK] [LINK] > Nearly Half The World's Civilian Guns Are In The U.S. [this video]
Cites lcnPylGDnU4H9OF · 2025-11 · on “More liberals, people of color and LGBTQ say they're buying guns out of fear”
The whole topic reminds me of Deviant Ollam's talk "Lawyer. Passport. Locksmith. Gun." ( [this video] ) He spends a fair amount of time talking about getting his queer and trans friends interested in guns. I suspect this has been the trend for a few years, at least. He includes a quote that is rather salient: "If you do not have the means of violence, you aren't peaceful; you're harmless."