Nut jobs blow their load on end of world predictions
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http://finance.yahoo.com/news/cost-prep ... 00600.html
The cost of preparing for doomsday isn't cheap.
First you have to stock up on the appropriate gear, ammunition, food and shelter to survive a nuclear meltdown, asteroid, earthquake, solar flare or some other catastrophe. Then there's acquiring the materials you'll need to rebuild a community after the dust settles.
The bottom line: Some self-described "preppers" are plunking down hundreds of thousands of dollars.
So far, Patrick Geryl estimates he's already spent more than $130,000 on his survival preparations.
Author of "How to Survive 2012" and eight other books about a catastrophe destined to occur this year, Geryl believes that a shift in the Earth's poles is going to result in solar flares, volcanic eruptions and earthquakes that will throw the world into a nuclear meltdown. The dreaded event will occur on December 21, when the Mayan calendar allegedly ends, he said.
Geryl plans to survive the turmoil in a small wooden bunker far from the nuclear radiation in South Africa, where he can live off the grid for about a year and rebuild a community with other survivors.
In order to do so, he has spent years stocking up on nearly 100 survival essentials, including guns and ammunition, water purification tablets, waterproof matches, a drafting table for charting stars in the sky -- even condoms to use for carrying water.
9 signs the world will end in 2012
Books with survival tips, like a guide to edible plants, herbs and mushrooms, are also crucial, because he won't have access to the internet when disaster strikes, he said. He's still accumulating all of the necessities he'll need and is constantly adding more items to the list. [Check out his survival list here]
To get to South Africa from his home in Belgium during a worldwide catastrophe is another issue. Geryl said he is currently considering sailing there in an "unsinkable yacht," which is made by a company called Etap in Belgium. However, he said the yachts, which have double walls and are insulated with foam so that they are supposedly unable to capsize, cost more than $100,000, so he doesn't know if he'll be able to afford one.
Robert Bast, 46, is a prepper who works in Internet marketing during the day and runs an online community called Survive2012.com when he's off the clock. Bast, who lives in Melbourne, Australia, with his wife and three children, has spent more than $350,000 preparing for "the end of the world as we know it."
The end of the world, he says, could come at any time and result from any type of disaster.
"What is certain is that in my lifetime, there is a strong likelihood that there will be a catastrophe of some kind -- the sun destroying power grids, a flu pandemic that kills millions, an asteroid or meteor or comet striking earth or a magnetic pole shift," said Bast.
Bast has spent about $5,000 on stockpiles of food and water, and $11,000 on equipment including gas cookers, generators, batteries, water purifiers and solar power. He also purchased roughly an acre of land that's a 75-minute drive from Melbourne and 1,500 feet above sea level (in order to stay high and dry in case of a flood or tsunami). He has built a house there, as well as a bunker to serve as his "safe spot" in the event of an emergency. Together, the land, buildings and bunker have cost him a total of about $330,000.
He's also spent $10,000 on an 8-year old Toyota HiLux pickup truck to drive to his safe spot.
To afford all of this, Bast has been saving money from his job for years. He has a mortgage on his primary residence, and he took out a second mortgage for the home he built as his safe house.
Phil Burns, a co-founder of the American Preppers Network and the subject of "Meet the Preppers" on Animal Planet, is preparing for all types of disaster scenarios.
Among the more ominous: A natural disaster or economic collapse that causes mass starvation, causing people to become so desperate for food and shelter that they lose their minds and resort to violence. In the preparedness world, these people are often referred to as "zombies."
How to survive a zombie apocalypse
To ensure his survival in the event of a disaster like this, Burns, 38, has been prepping for years. He now has a year's worth of food in storage, including 4,000 pounds of wheat, beans and rice that cost about $5,000. He even has 20 bottles of different food flavorings, so that "one day I could have vanilla rice and the next I could have orange rice -- because just plain rice gets old."
He also has an RV and trailer to use as a "bug out vehicle" to get to his "bug out location,"which is a fully-stocked 40-acre retreat tucked away in the mountains of Idaho.
To protect himself from any attackers and to be able to hunt for food as a family, he has purchased several guns for each of his eight children (who learned how to shoot at age 4). Burns declined to disclose the number of guns he and his wife have, nor how much money they have spent on them.
While Burns has spent a pretty penny on his own preparations -- about $20,000 on food and guns alone -- he says that preparedness is a lifestyle and doesn't believe everyone should start spending huge amounts of money getting ready for the end of the world.
Financial apocalypse 2012
Instead, Burns advises beginning preppers to start by setting aside up to 20% of their income for preparations -- whether it goes toward supplies, emergency training classes or shelter.
Anyone can become a prepper if they are willing to dedicate the energy and resources to it, he said.
"A lot of people say preppers are paranoid, scared, pessimistic, always believing that there's going to be a disaster," said Burns. "But if you look at it with open eyes, we're actually optimists -- we're saying, 'I don't care what you throw at me, I can survive it.' "
Are you concerned that a disaster is imminent? What are you doing to prepare? E-mail <!-- e --><a href="mailto:blake.ellis@turner.com">blake.ellis@turner.com</a><!-- e --> for the chance to be included in an upcoming story on CNNMoney
The cost of preparing for doomsday isn't cheap.
First you have to stock up on the appropriate gear, ammunition, food and shelter to survive a nuclear meltdown, asteroid, earthquake, solar flare or some other catastrophe. Then there's acquiring the materials you'll need to rebuild a community after the dust settles.
The bottom line: Some self-described "preppers" are plunking down hundreds of thousands of dollars.
So far, Patrick Geryl estimates he's already spent more than $130,000 on his survival preparations.
Author of "How to Survive 2012" and eight other books about a catastrophe destined to occur this year, Geryl believes that a shift in the Earth's poles is going to result in solar flares, volcanic eruptions and earthquakes that will throw the world into a nuclear meltdown. The dreaded event will occur on December 21, when the Mayan calendar allegedly ends, he said.
Geryl plans to survive the turmoil in a small wooden bunker far from the nuclear radiation in South Africa, where he can live off the grid for about a year and rebuild a community with other survivors.
In order to do so, he has spent years stocking up on nearly 100 survival essentials, including guns and ammunition, water purification tablets, waterproof matches, a drafting table for charting stars in the sky -- even condoms to use for carrying water.
9 signs the world will end in 2012
Books with survival tips, like a guide to edible plants, herbs and mushrooms, are also crucial, because he won't have access to the internet when disaster strikes, he said. He's still accumulating all of the necessities he'll need and is constantly adding more items to the list. [Check out his survival list here]
To get to South Africa from his home in Belgium during a worldwide catastrophe is another issue. Geryl said he is currently considering sailing there in an "unsinkable yacht," which is made by a company called Etap in Belgium. However, he said the yachts, which have double walls and are insulated with foam so that they are supposedly unable to capsize, cost more than $100,000, so he doesn't know if he'll be able to afford one.
Robert Bast, 46, is a prepper who works in Internet marketing during the day and runs an online community called Survive2012.com when he's off the clock. Bast, who lives in Melbourne, Australia, with his wife and three children, has spent more than $350,000 preparing for "the end of the world as we know it."
The end of the world, he says, could come at any time and result from any type of disaster.
"What is certain is that in my lifetime, there is a strong likelihood that there will be a catastrophe of some kind -- the sun destroying power grids, a flu pandemic that kills millions, an asteroid or meteor or comet striking earth or a magnetic pole shift," said Bast.
Bast has spent about $5,000 on stockpiles of food and water, and $11,000 on equipment including gas cookers, generators, batteries, water purifiers and solar power. He also purchased roughly an acre of land that's a 75-minute drive from Melbourne and 1,500 feet above sea level (in order to stay high and dry in case of a flood or tsunami). He has built a house there, as well as a bunker to serve as his "safe spot" in the event of an emergency. Together, the land, buildings and bunker have cost him a total of about $330,000.
He's also spent $10,000 on an 8-year old Toyota HiLux pickup truck to drive to his safe spot.
To afford all of this, Bast has been saving money from his job for years. He has a mortgage on his primary residence, and he took out a second mortgage for the home he built as his safe house.
Phil Burns, a co-founder of the American Preppers Network and the subject of "Meet the Preppers" on Animal Planet, is preparing for all types of disaster scenarios.
Among the more ominous: A natural disaster or economic collapse that causes mass starvation, causing people to become so desperate for food and shelter that they lose their minds and resort to violence. In the preparedness world, these people are often referred to as "zombies."
How to survive a zombie apocalypse
To ensure his survival in the event of a disaster like this, Burns, 38, has been prepping for years. He now has a year's worth of food in storage, including 4,000 pounds of wheat, beans and rice that cost about $5,000. He even has 20 bottles of different food flavorings, so that "one day I could have vanilla rice and the next I could have orange rice -- because just plain rice gets old."
He also has an RV and trailer to use as a "bug out vehicle" to get to his "bug out location,"which is a fully-stocked 40-acre retreat tucked away in the mountains of Idaho.
To protect himself from any attackers and to be able to hunt for food as a family, he has purchased several guns for each of his eight children (who learned how to shoot at age 4). Burns declined to disclose the number of guns he and his wife have, nor how much money they have spent on them.
While Burns has spent a pretty penny on his own preparations -- about $20,000 on food and guns alone -- he says that preparedness is a lifestyle and doesn't believe everyone should start spending huge amounts of money getting ready for the end of the world.
Financial apocalypse 2012
Instead, Burns advises beginning preppers to start by setting aside up to 20% of their income for preparations -- whether it goes toward supplies, emergency training classes or shelter.
Anyone can become a prepper if they are willing to dedicate the energy and resources to it, he said.
"A lot of people say preppers are paranoid, scared, pessimistic, always believing that there's going to be a disaster," said Burns. "But if you look at it with open eyes, we're actually optimists -- we're saying, 'I don't care what you throw at me, I can survive it.' "
Are you concerned that a disaster is imminent? What are you doing to prepare? E-mail <!-- e --><a href="mailto:blake.ellis@turner.com">blake.ellis@turner.com</a><!-- e --> for the chance to be included in an upcoming story on CNNMoney
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Comments
Truth is, once I run out of beer and /or realize there is no hope for another PJ tour, I'd just as soon be dead.
you could brew some wheat beer
It sells books/merchandise, gets hits for web sites, and gets some needy people attention they wouldn't get otherwise. If you say it often enough and ominously enough, there's a certain segment of the population that will believe it must be true. All you have to do is say something like, "The Mayans have correctly predicted many other events," and people will just accept it as fact without looking it up to see if it's even true or if those events were noteworthy or stupid stuff like seasons and phases of the moon.
Get your head out of the gutter. Jeez, it's like people can't use the words "nut" and "blow their load" these days without somebody thinking it's something sexual.
:P
where have you been hiding
these people make me laugh, how do they even know these houses/bunkers they're building will even save their lives
2000 - Noblesville
2010 - Noblesville
2011 - EV solo St Louis, PJ20 Alpine Valley
2012 - San Fran (Oracle)
2013 - Wrigley, Pittsburgh, Buffalo
2014 - Cincy, St Louis, Detroit
2016 - Lexington, Wrigley
2018 - Wrigley
2022 - Nashville, St Louis
2024 - Noblesville, Wrigley
Was it that show "Apocalypse Man" on History Channel? It was a short lived series with some Ex-Navy Seal or something like that, who is apparently very paranoid about the apocalypse and has devoted his life to honing his survival skills and teaching it. The show was such bullshit though, all of his survival methods revolved on him finding all these random things just laying around in the same spot to make his MacGuyver inventions. Like he would go into an "abandoned building" to scrounge supplies, and of course the stuff he needed was just laying around in there. So he would just so happen to find a bike chain, brake cleaner, a 9V battery and a box of lasagna noodles, or whatever random shit he needed to make his little contraptions.
I may have been, I didn't watch too much of it, but the part I did see, it looked like he had a major mail order business running out of his garage for all of the survival gear and food, had a couple of partners, and this multi-tool, he said the military was interested in it. So I took it that he was making a bunch of money of his paranoia.
apparenty it does. I need to get in on that. what are you afraid of?
rain on a sunny day
I'll be building a bunker in Philly if anyone wants to join. It'll be above ground and there will probably only be water, beer, and pop tarts available, but you're all welcome.
I've got a selection of umbrellas at good prices
i'll be over shortly....
I saw her first. and I am about 12 hours closer than you
we are both screwed...somebody else already professed their love for her here.
oh yeah. I forgot about that. so hows that going?
Oh boy. I forgot about that too. Thanks for refreshing my memory. It's going really well, 2.5 kids and a picket fence...
Top half or bottom half of the third kid? Or, just split down the middle?
I'm up for the bunker, depending on what flavoer of Pop-Tarts you're stocking.