5 Weird Ways The Rich Are Preparing For The Apocalypse
Say, are you worried about the end of the world? Sure you are! It's been scheduled to happen like 30 times in the last 30 days, and you better believe we'll be penciling it in a bunch more times before the week is out. Nuclear war, global warming, sentient sex dolls -- shit's going down one day. And you can prepare for it like everyone else, with your canned hams and fallout shelters, or you can do what the truly paranoid and rich are doing.
For example, Steve Huffman, the founder of Reddit, went out and got corrective eye surgery specifically so he'll be better able to see the super mutants hunting him after America collapses into anarchy. He really did that (minus the mutant part, I think). And that's but the tip of the wealthy doomsday prepper iceberg. Other ludicrously rich folks are making ...
Weaponized Rabbit Poop
Science tells us that rabbits can reproduce at a rate of ... well, five were born in your yard in the time it took you to read this sentence. The animals are plentiful and fairly adept at adapting to most situations. So when society collapses and only the mohawk'd wastelanders have access to gasoline, what the hell are you supposed to do? You hitch your star to Nick Klein's Hostile Hare wagon and ride it to a new world order. Not the "New World Order," with Illuminati and world governments and sliced peaches on your pizza, 'cause that's just crazy shit. Just a new world with rabbit turds everywhere.
Nick's rabbit plan is for when society is on its last legs and our only option is to turn to Easter's finest mascot. See, one female rabbit can produce enough offspring to give you 320 pounds (or roughly one Hulk Hogan) of the most adorable meat, and they take fewer resources than a cow to get to that point, because cows are just wicked assholes. And while food in the apocalypse is all fine and dandy, there's more to these rabbits than just Armageddon stew. Klein is using their turds as biofuel. Through a process which both Nick and myself in the first grade named "gasification," the little turds get turned into a gas, which can run anything from engines to post-apocalyptic vibrators to the actual functioning flamethrower he built, which runs exclusively on the stuff. Good luck sending your Warboys to purloin Klein's precious car parts when he's going full Doof Warrior on you with a flaming guitar or whatever the hell else he can invent that runs on bunny shit.
Most apocalypse movies tend to overlook the fact that gasoline has a limited shelf life and will eventually start going bad, oxidizing and screwing up fuel lines. So you can't rely on big tanks of it keeping you going forever. So this poop thing may be a big deal. You know, if the world ends. Of course, if the world does end, you're going to want to eat something on the side of that rabbit, so why not buy ...
$160 Potato Soup
Jim Bakker has your best interests at heart. He really wants you to survive when the End Times come and Jesus closes all of the Burger Kings, or whatever. But for you to do that, he needs your donation of $160 for a bucket of magic goddamn soup.
Bakker, a televangelist, wants you scared of starving like a rabbitless sack of shit once everything goes down. He wants you paranoid that you're going to be locked in your basement while ultra-godless homosexual squid aliens roam the streets, vaporizing hard-working men and women like you and your family. You can't have that! You need to be prepared, and part of being prepared is having a 50-pound bucket of potato soup. Now, you may ask yourself: Isn't this actually just about $30 worth of soup mix? Yes and no. Yes because it is, no because you're spending $160 on it. And it's so good! Here, take Jim's word for it.
No one gags like that on soup that isn't good. I was raised in a proud family of soup fanatics, so I know a delicious soup gag when I hear one. That's how you gag on scrumptiousness.
Bakker's promise that you can put pudding on bread and have a party as the world ends should reassure you that he's on the up and up, because no one would say something so outrageously idiotic if it wasn't sincere. He also suggests that rich people should buy a million dollars' worth of his food buckets, because when the world ends, that money won't be worth anything anyway. And don't worry if the food runs out. God will refill it. For real, a dude on his show said that. And while you may be quick to dismiss him as what the Bible calls "a dick," his net worth is only estimated at a mere $500,000, so he clearly needs your help.
Now that we've got our food supplies all taken care of, you're going to need someplace to live. But don't worry, that's been taken care of too. If you have the cash, you can try ...
Real-Life Fallout
Not to sound too much like a gamer hipster, but I played the original Fallout back when no one knew what a computer was and you had to install it on a Casio calculator to make it work. It was a fun game, and the idea of being some shelter recluse with no idea what the world outside was like was pretty cool. And if you agree that it sounds cool, man have I got news for you. You could be that Vault Dweller! Right. Now.
For a nominal fee (of thousands of dollars), a company called Vivos is more than ready to prepare you for a future of radscorpions, super mutants, and curiously valuable bottle caps. You really owe it to yourself to visit their super dramatic apocalyptic-themed website and watch the autoplay video set to Lorde's cover of "Everybody Wants To Rule The World." A tattered American flag, the world falling into the sun, the Eiffel Tower in flames -- it really paints a picture of grand-scale fucking. What's a person to do? Buy a damn shelter, dummy. Preferably one with a gym.
Vivos Shelters aren't those shitty shelters that your grandpa used to cower in when the world ended; these are luxury doomsday condos. With locations in Indiana and South Dakota and plans for more in Germany, Vivos can offer you space for as little as $25,000. The whole South Dakota site will be able to handle up to 5,000 people, can withstand surface blasts and fallout, has access to clean water, and will feature a members-only restaurant and bar, so after the world ends, you don't have to eat a steak next to a shiftless ghoul.
With amenities like a hot tub spa, a community theater, and even stables for all your resource-efficient horses, you have no reason not to buy your own bunker in this former military munitions depot. A single bunker can handle up to 20 people, so that's barely more than $1,000 per person. You know 19 people you'd like to be trapped underground with during the apocalypse, right?
Just remember, once you're settled into your bunker, you're going to want more than Jim Bakker's potato soup, especially if you're trying to impress your borderline-radioactive neighbors at the spa. So maybe invest in ...
Costco's $6,000 End Of The World Deal
Leave it to Costco to have your back when Lord Humongous makes it difficult to buy pickles in bulk, assuming you have room to store 600 cans of food and plans to live off of it as a family of four for about a year. The Nutristore premium one-year food kit has 36,000 servings, featuring all your favorites like "hard white wheat" and "instant pinto bean flakes." God, that takes me back to dinner at Grandma's, after she'd stopped taking her meds and replaced them with Wild Turkey 101.
The kit contains enough canned and freeze-dried meals for four people to have 2,000 calories per day for a full year, and as an added bonus, it will be shipped discreetly. So when the neighbors see an entire pallet being loaded into your cellar, they'll probably just think it's advanced sex robots and not anything weird.
If you really want to live large, you might consider investing in the Canadian version, which has a much greater variety of food items, including refried beans, peaches, granola, peanut butter, and honey. When Canada stops existing, they are going to be having a pretty good time, from the sounds of things.
There are also other versions suitable for fewer people, including the Mountain House kit, which has full entrees for a year, like mac and cheese or spaghetti with meat sauce. The wastelanders are going to be pretty jealous of you, big eater. They'll be licking their lips outside your bunker doors as you and your mutated friends and family enjoy a classic post-humanity Thanksgiving.
The food has a shelf life of up to 25 years, so you don't need to wait for the aliens to actually start vaporizing your community to order it; you're good to go right now. Just pack it up and have it stored on your brand-new ...
Land In New Zealand
New Zealand is more than just where Hobbits and those hilarious birds made of kiwi fruit come from. It's also where all of our billionaires plan to go when bombs start flying, assuming they're not the ones firing them off. For whatever reason, people like PayPal founder Peter Thiel and venture capitalist Sam Altman are pretty sure the Kiwis are going to survive the end times if Trump or robots or Robo-Trumps come to do us all in. Is it because New Zealand is a little off the beaten path? Is it because of its plentiful mutton? Who can say?
Thiel, amid some public outcry, was granted a New Zealand passport after buying nearly 500 acres of land, which is the kind of thing a billionaire thinks they need if the world has ended. Usually, foreigners are required to live in New Zealand for three years before getting a passport, but for some reason, when you're a billionaire, people are really accommodating. A portion of the land he bought was where the Lord Of The Rings movies were filmed, so it's entirely possible Thiel will wait out an apocalypse inside Bag End, which is a dream for so many of us.
Nearly 1,400 square miles of New Zealand real estate was purchased by foreigners in 2016 alone -- a massive increase from previous years. And a few of the people buying the land are moving there "just in case." Reid Hoffman, the founder of LinkedIn, mentioned New Zealand to a friend in passing, who then asked if he was going there for doomsday insurance. In the world of rich folks, going to New Zealand is basically code for saying you're getting ready to leave it all behind, kind of like how when someone tells you they're cool with "anything" for dinner, what they mean is "whatever you choose, I'll hate."
As you may expect, the housing boom in New Zealand is not particularly welcome. The government there is actually now banning the sale of real estate to foreigners, because the increased demand has made it nearly impossible for New Zealanders to buy land, as prices are going through the roof. So the potential for the end of the world is actually ruining the present for people in New Zealand. Who would've thought that insanely rich people preparing for hypothetical events could cut the legs out from under less-fortunate people? I for one am shocked.
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Check out Robert Evans' A Brief History of Vice: How Bad Behavior Built Civilization, a celebration of the brave, drunken pioneers who built our civilization one seemingly bad decision at a time.
