The Art of Manliness - #650： Why People Are Building Bunkers for the Apocalypse

00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.

00:00:11.240 And when you think about bunkers, you might be apt to think of the 1950s and people building

00:00:15.240 basement and backyard fallout shelters during the Cold War. But there's a second doom boom

00:00:19.080 going on right now, and people aren't just burrowing into the earth to protect themselves

00:00:22.160 from a nuclear bomb. My guest today traveled across four continents to explore what's driving

00:00:26.220 this phenomenon and how it's manifesting itself in the modern age. His name is Bradley Garrett,

00:00:30.400 and he's a professor of cultural geography and the author of Bunker, Building for the

00:00:33.880 End Times. We begin our conversation with the immersive dive Bradley took into urban exploration

00:00:38.060 for his PhD and how it led to his fascination with the building of underground bunkers.

00:00:42.420 From there, we dip into the history of bunkers, from the ancient subterranean cities built

00:00:45.940 in Turkey to the government decisions made during the Cold War that led Americans to build

00:00:50.020 blast shelters in their backyards. From there, we dig into why a multi-billion dollar private

00:00:54.120 bunker building industry has emerged in the present day and how it's not being driven by

00:00:57.480 a specific threat, but instead a diffuse sense of dread. We discuss how bunker building breaks

00:01:02.140 down to individual communal approaches and why the latter one is ascendant. Bradley then

00:01:06.080 takes us on a tour of two underground communities, one a complex of her 500 subterranean cement

00:01:10.480 rooms in South Dakota and the other a former nuclear missile silo in Kansas, which has been

00:01:14.780 turned into a luxe 15-story inverted skyscraper of survival condos complete with a swimming pool,

00:01:19.880 dog park, movie theater, and grocery store. We then turn to the modern movement of backyard

00:01:23.780 bunker building and how it often represents an act of resistance against the surveillance

00:01:27.340 state. We also look at the culture of prepping in different countries, including the building

00:01:30.860 of bug-out vehicles and fire bunkers in Australia. We entered a conversation with whether or not

00:01:34.760 Bradley ultimately concluded that bunker building and survival prepping is a rational response

00:01:38.540 to the state of the world and whether he became a prepper himself. After the show's over,

00:01:42.520 check out the show notes at awim.is slash bunker.

00:01:51.500 All right, Bradley Garrett, welcome to the show.

00:01:53.780 Hey, thanks. Thanks for having me, Brett. It's a pleasure to be here.

00:01:56.600 So you got a new book out, Bunker, Building for the End Times. And this is a, I don't know,

00:02:01.260 an anthropology, a cultural exploration of the culture of building bunkers and prepping.

00:02:07.280 Before we get to that, let's talk about your background because that led into this book.

00:02:10.660 You yourself, you're an urban explorer, but you're also a cultural geographer. For those who

00:02:16.160 aren't familiar with urban exploration, what is it? And then how did you tie that into your academic

00:02:20.880 career? Well, so cultural geography isn't a huge sub-discipline in the United States,

00:02:27.140 but it's essentially a cross-section between geography and anthropology. So I find interesting

00:02:33.340 groups of people who are kind of redefining the spaces around them. And I did my PhD with these

00:02:39.700 urban explorers who were sneaking into off-limits spaces in cities. They were sneaking into abandoned

00:02:46.360 buildings, construction sites, infrastructural systems. And they had this kind of really

00:02:52.860 fascinating philosophy where they told me that they saw the city as sort of like an operating

00:02:58.360 system, right? It's built to force people to function in a particular way, right? It forces

00:03:03.720 you to move through the city in a certain way, to interact with it in a certain way.

00:03:08.640 And what they were doing, I eventually came to call place hacking because it was kind of like

00:03:13.140 they were hacking the operating system of the city. They were trying to wiggle into the guts and

00:03:18.020 see how things work. And their curiosity was just overwhelming. And I ended up spending 10 years

00:03:24.560 with these explorers, sneaking into hundreds of off-limits locations all over the world and saw some

00:03:30.880 pretty incredible things. And that ended up being my first book, Explore Everything, Place Hacking the

00:03:36.900 City. What was the most incredible thing you came across during that 10 years?

00:03:40.840 There's so much. So we went on this 10-day road trip around Europe and snuck into about 100

00:03:48.580 buildings. And at the end of it, we had some intel that there was a metro system in Antwerp in Belgium

00:03:57.020 that was, they started constructing in the 1980s, I believe, and they never finished it. And we looked

00:04:03.260 on Google Earth and there was a massive hole that you could see from Google Earth. And so we went out

00:04:10.020 about 3 a.m. with some ropes and we rappelled into the hole. And we ended up dropping down about 100

00:04:17.760 feet onto a train platform. And we flicked on the light switch and all the lights came on in this

00:04:25.300 metro system. So imagine this, there's about, I don't know, seven, eight miles of tunnel system,

00:04:32.700 but the tracks were never laid. The platforms were there, but the trains were never brought in.

00:04:38.120 And we walked the entire thing and thought at one point, actually, that we were stuck in there

00:04:43.320 because the ascenders that we had to get back up the ropes got jammed. And luckily, we found a fire

00:04:50.320 exit, but it got a bit hairy there for a minute. We thought we were going to have to call the fire

00:04:53.960 department or something.

00:04:55.280 In urban exploration, it's like that gray area. It's usually illegal, sometimes not, but typically

00:05:00.560 illegal. Did you ever get in trouble for doing this stuff?

00:05:03.860 You know, I've been caught a handful of times. And more often than not, it's a security guard

00:05:11.240 that catches you, not a police officer. And they don't really want to let the people that they work

00:05:17.380 for know that they found four people with backpacks and cameras wandering around and wherever.

00:05:23.040 So usually, they'll just send you on your way.

00:05:25.020 We did have one instance where the police were called. We were on top of a roof in London,

00:05:32.900 taking photos of the city. And we heard all these sirens. We were like, oh, something's going on

00:05:37.600 down there. And we looked over the edge of the building and they had surrounded the building.

00:05:42.420 And so they obviously were there for us and they were going to bring in dogs. There was no doubt about

00:05:47.520 it. So we just, we went down, hands up, you know, and said, hey, we're photographers,

00:05:51.480 you know, we're not doing anything nefarious. And one of the police officers said, you know,

00:05:56.960 he's like, well, you're not photographers. Let me see your camera. So we start flipping through

00:06:01.440 the photos and he said, oh, these photos are, these are fantastic. He was actually really kind

00:06:08.520 of interested in what we were doing. But, you know, eventually he said, look, I'll let you guys go,

00:06:13.540 but you need to delete all those photos. Because obviously the property owner is not very happy

00:06:17.120 about the prospect of you releasing those online and everyone realizing that their security is lax.

00:06:22.780 So yeah, it is a gray area in that not a lot of people, most of the time, people don't know that

00:06:27.940 we're there, right? Until the photos are posted. And sometimes people really don't care at all.

00:06:34.340 But every once in a while, you know, we get into something that we, it's like super sensitive

00:06:38.540 state infrastructure, and then you can end up in some trouble. And eventually we did have a

00:06:44.220 police investigation launched against us because we were sneaking into all the abandoned

00:06:50.260 metro stations in the London tube. And the British transport police who are in charge of security

00:06:57.620 there were really not happy that we were getting away with that. So they eventually took down our

00:07:03.380 doors with battering rams and confiscated all of our equipment and sent us to court. And the court

00:07:09.100 threw out the charges, but we ended up being on bail for two years. They took my passport,

00:07:14.040 so I got stuck in the UK for two years awaiting trial. And, you know, by the time we actually

00:07:19.700 got to trial, I felt like I had already served the sentence for what we were doing.

00:07:23.840 All right. So urban exploration, it's sort of, it's a subversive subculture, right? Because

00:07:28.280 you're doing things that are, you know, you're going to places where you shouldn't go. And your work

00:07:33.580 with urban exploration led you to exploring the cultures of bunkers, prepping, and survivalism.

00:07:39.240 How did those two worlds connect or collide?

00:07:43.300 Well, one of the places, so we ended up finding all these Cold War bunkers that were underneath

00:07:49.020 London. And obviously they were, they were built for a nuclear attack on the Capitol and they were 0.54

00:07:54.540 never used. And I mean, some of them, they were fascinating. They still had supplies in them.

00:07:59.460 They still had food and water, you know, signage to direct people where to go. And you can kind of

00:08:03.920 imagine people being down there and thinking about when they're going to emerge from this bunker into

00:08:11.020 the post-apocalyptic world, right? Like imagine popping the hatch to that bunker and you emerge

00:08:17.400 into this like blast stricken city that's totally irradiated. And I kept running through those

00:08:23.840 fantasies in my head about, you know, these bunkers that were never used. And then one of the bunkers

00:08:30.360 that we had explored called Burlington, it's in Wiltshire, just outside of London. It's a massive

00:08:36.460 subterranean secret city. There's about 60 miles of roads down there, radio broadcasting facilities,

00:08:43.720 a library that you would need to reconstruct the government in the event of nuclear war,

00:08:48.200 totally fascinating place. Well, this bunker, the government obviously didn't know what to do

00:08:52.840 with it after the end of the Cold War. And so they put it up for sale.

00:08:56.100 And one of the potential buyers was a California real estate developer called Robert Vecino.

00:09:03.740 And I just called Robert and said, what do you want to do with this thing? And he outlined for me

00:09:09.120 this incredible scenario where, you know, that kind of mirrored what the government had planned to do,

00:09:14.560 but he was going to do it for private individuals. He wanted to purchase the bunker and then kit it out

00:09:20.520 for about 300 people. And the idea was that, you know, his paying clients would be able to retreat

00:09:26.680 into that bunker, wait out some sort of calamity and then emerge into the post-apocalyptic world.

00:09:33.140 And that was the beginning of my research with preppers. And I've spent the past three years

00:09:38.040 traveling to four continents and interviewing more than a hundred people, seeing the bunkers that

00:09:44.360 they're building and talking to them about the apprehensions that they have about this kind of

00:09:49.100 uncertain future that we all seem to be headed into.

00:09:52.340 Well, and when we think of bunkers, we typically think of it as like a relatively modern thing,

00:09:56.520 right? It's like coming across like the abandoned Cold War bunker because everyone was freaked out

00:10:00.440 there was going to be nuclear annihilation. But you highlight the fact that being in the book that

00:10:03.840 humans have been building bunkers like for millennia. So what are some examples of ancient bunkers that

00:10:08.800 we know about? Well, it's obviously hard to trace back, you know, some kind of original bunker

00:10:15.400 because human beings would have been moving into caves where they would have been caching supplies 0.68

00:10:21.340 and stockpiling things and probably building up some sort of defenses. But in terms of large scale

00:10:27.300 communal bunkers, we can actually trace those back 2000 years to central Anatolia, what is now Turkey.

00:10:35.720 And if anyone ever gets a chance to go out, I mean, who knows when we're going to travel again,

00:10:40.120 but if anyone gets a chance to go to Istanbul, you can actually jump on a bus to Cappadocia

00:10:45.600 and see some of these subterranean cities. One of them that was constructed was first carved out by

00:10:52.140 the Hittites in 530 BCE, I think. And eventually they had room underground for 20,000 people.

00:11:01.140 So again, these are huge subterranean cities. They would have had livestock down there,

00:11:06.580 stockpiled supplies. And, you know, this was a space of protection. You know, the underground

00:11:12.680 has always been for human beings a place where we protect what is most important to us. It's space

00:11:19.440 for defense. It's also where we bury the things that we're scared of. You know, we've got long

00:11:23.700 associations with cultural associations with the underground and the underworld, you know,

00:11:29.020 so it's a place of fear, but also a place of safety. And that juxtaposition, you know,

00:11:35.320 flows through over the next 2,000 years. By the time we get to World War II and the Cold War,

00:11:40.920 you know, bunkers are being built en masse all over the world. But, you know, they are a reflection

00:11:46.860 of our past. You know, they're a reflection of our speculative anxieties about all the things that

00:11:53.120 could go wrong in the world. And for me, that feels like they're a very human space. You know,

00:11:58.680 human beings are unique in their ability to speculate about things that might happen and prepare for

00:12:04.640 those things. Well, let's talk about, so we've been building bunkers for a long time in different

00:12:09.160 forms. But yeah, it really took off in the 20th century, because we all know it's like the threat

00:12:13.820 of nuclear annihilation. That was the thing. Everyone started building bunkers. Governments

00:12:16.920 started building bunkers. But you also explore, what I didn't know about this, decisions that U.S.

00:12:22.100 leaders made in the 1940s, 1950s, that influenced how bunker building was approached in the United

00:12:29.140 States. So what decisions did they make that influenced, and like what happened in America that

00:12:33.240 differed in other countries? So there was a team of nuclear strategists that were kind of philosophers

00:12:40.480 or fascinating people that were trying to think through the psychological, ethical, moral, social,

00:12:46.720 political implications of nuclear war. And one of those strategists was called Herman Kahn. He worked

00:12:52.560 for the Rand Corporation. And Kahn came up with an estimate, which he supplied to the government

00:12:58.160 to create blast shelters for every American. So a blast shelter is different than a fallout

00:13:05.300 shelter, right? A fallout shelter is, it couldn't take a bomb hit, right? But you could hide in there

00:13:10.860 for a couple of weeks and then re-emerge when the radiation levels are low. So Kahn said that's not

00:13:16.480 sufficient. What we need is blast shelters for every American. And the estimate that he submitted,

00:13:21.140 I think to the Eisenhower administration, where essentially the, it was essentially our gross

00:13:27.540 domestic product for a year. It was an astronomical sum of money. So the Eisenhower administration made

00:13:34.380 the decision eventually to spend, I think, one one-thousandth of that on basically locating places

00:13:42.480 that could be used as fallout shelters, like parking garages, for instance. And every once in a while,

00:13:48.220 when you're traveling around, you'll see these small signs that have the radiation symbol on them,

00:13:52.960 and they say fallout shelter. Those are from the Cold War. But essentially what happened is that

00:13:57.920 in the background, the government was building bunkers for themselves. So they were the Greenbrier 0.92

00:14:04.120 Resort in West Virginia, for instance, they started building a massive bunker under there.

00:14:09.100 Obviously, the White House has a bunker under it. They started building large-scale underground

00:14:13.900 government facilities at NORAD, Raven Rock. And we didn't realize that, you know, the general public

00:14:19.720 didn't realize that this had happened until after the Cold War. And I think there was a real sense of

00:14:25.240 betrayal because in other parts of the world, the government did build those blast shelters for

00:14:30.600 every human being. In Switzerland, for instance, they've got space for 110% of the population,

00:14:37.840 which I find hilarious. And I guess they just built some extra space in case tourists are in town or

00:14:42.520 whatever. You know, it's a very different philosophy. And it draws a sharp contrast between

00:14:48.960 the kind of small state, you know, rugged individualism, take care of yourself ethos that

00:14:55.800 we have here in the United States. You know, that sits in stark contrast with places in Scandinavia

00:15:02.120 and in Europe, and even in the Soviet Union, where they did a much better job of building protection

00:15:07.600 for everyone. Which, which at the end of the day, wasn't needed, of course. You know, these places

00:15:11.880 look like architectural follies to us now. They were never used for their intended purposes. But

00:15:17.700 if that nuclear war had unfolded in the way that it was expected, it might, the United States would 0.89

00:15:23.040 have been in a terrible situation. Well, and like most things, if the state's not going to provide

00:15:27.760 something, the private sector will step in and provide a service that people want. So you saw, you

00:15:32.740 highlight like this too, in the fifties, private companies or even magazines, publications, giving

00:15:38.400 families, people instructions on how to build their own blast shelter. Yeah, yeah. Sears was in on it.

00:15:45.220 There were a number of companies that were, that were selling these kind of backyard fallout shelters.

00:15:49.900 Social scientists call this the doom boom, this kind of multi-million dollar industry that emerged

00:15:55.360 almost overnight in response to the nuclear threat. And, and the clear government mandate pushing the

00:16:02.420 burden of preparation on individuals. There was actually a famous speech that Kennedy gave in

00:16:06.920 1961, where he said, essentially, it was the responsibility of every American to make their

00:16:12.720 own preparations for nuclear war. And, and so yeah, a private market emerged as it always will

00:16:18.100 to serve those needs. And what we're seeing right now around the world, and what, what my book is

00:16:22.960 primarily about is this second doom boom. We're, we're back in a moment where people feel incredibly

00:16:28.800 uneasy about not just nuclear war, but the possibility of, you know, artificial intelligence running

00:16:35.320 rampant or an asteroid slamming into the earth or, you know, political unrest, you know, civil war 2.0

00:16:41.940 breaking out. And, and so people are going to these bunker builders in droves and the private

00:16:47.780 industry is emerging to meet those demands again. And now we're looking at a, a multi-billion dollar

00:16:53.200 industry, which is serving up, according to my most recent estimates, almost 12 million Americans

00:16:58.840 who are actively prepping. Well, okay. So let's talk about the, the state of bunker building today

00:17:04.460 and like what's driving it, like the psychology of it. So in times past ancient times, they were

00:17:09.380 probably bunkering for war in the fifties. They were, people were bunkering because they're afraid

00:17:14.320 there's going to be a nuke drop near them. So they had to be ready for that. And you just talk,

00:17:18.060 highlight a whole bunch of things that the people you talk to, you know, spouted off and the reason why

00:17:22.760 they were building a bunker where they were prepping. And what's interesting about all these

00:17:27.440 different things, whether it's AI, political unrest, you know, nuclear stuff still on the table

00:17:32.180 is that it's not like a specific fear. You said it's more like instead of people are just sort of

00:17:37.280 dread, they're just dreading the future. So how, what's the, what do you think is the difference

00:17:41.140 between fear and dread? And like, why do you think dread is like a big driving cause of the bunker

00:17:46.300 building? It's a, it's a great question. I spent inordinate amount of time trying to figure out the

00:17:51.540 difference between anxiety, dread and fear as I was working through this book, because you're right.

00:17:57.860 It's, you know, fear, fear has an object, you know, it's, it's concrete. It's, you can, you can

00:18:03.600 pinpoint the thing that you fear. Whereas dread is more amorphous or anxiety is more amorphous as well,

00:18:09.900 right? It's, you're feeling a sense of dread about a general sense. It's a general sense of unease.

00:18:16.480 It's kind of hard to put parameters around. And a lot of the people, a lot of the preppers that I

00:18:21.040 spoke to for this book, they didn't have a specific thing that they were prepping for. They were prepping

00:18:26.640 for a range of calamities and that it affects the way that you build, you know, because if you're,

00:18:32.500 if you're putting a, an air filter on your bunker, for instance, you make sure that it, it can filter

00:18:38.740 out nuclear biological and chemical contaminants. If you're worried about an electromagnetic pulse,

00:18:46.000 you know, that, that could be produced from a, a coronal mass ejection from the sun or potentially

00:18:52.500 the detonation of a nuclear weapon high in the atmosphere that would wipe out electrical systems,

00:18:58.560 then you, you harden for that, right? You get hardened solar panels, battery backups, you,

00:19:04.360 you shield everything. And if you interpret the architecture of these bunker builders who are,

00:19:11.480 you know, who are all around us building these communities in that way, you start to see the

00:19:17.400 architecture of dread. You start to see that people are building for, they're building for the unknown.

00:19:22.980 And we can see that in other points in the past too. One of my favorite examples is in Mexico,

00:19:29.140 in the Yucatan Peninsula, just at the end of the, the post-classic Maya era, when the Spanish had come

00:19:36.700 over and brought disease with them, the Maya didn't know what, where these diseases were coming from. 0.99

00:19:42.360 And so they started building walls. They'd never built walls before around their settlements. And so

00:19:48.480 you get these kind of, you know, beautiful pyramids that had been there for thousands of years. And then

00:19:53.760 suddenly they start building these, these kind of really haphazard walls around the places that

00:19:59.540 they're residing to keep out the virus, to keep out the diseases that they can't see because they don't

00:20:04.600 know where they're coming from. The architecture of dread that I'm seeing now that, that I explore

00:20:09.280 in this book, you know, feels to me like a, like a similar, you know, like it's mirroring that

00:20:14.420 history, you know, that if we were to look back at this a hundred years from now, it tells a story

00:20:20.620 about our collective sense of unease. And that's, that's essentially what the book is about.

00:20:25.560 Yeah. So it sounds like, it sounds like, I mean, sure if humans have experienced dread throughout,

00:20:29.060 you know, history, but it sounds like dread is a very modern phenomenon because there's,

00:20:33.140 because we, we know, we know so many possible unknowns. And so you have to like prepare for

00:20:38.500 all of them. And that's pretty much impossible to do. Well, you know, like we all have this sense

00:20:43.620 that watching the news makes us really depressed because you, you learn about things that you don't

00:20:47.720 necessarily need to know about, but it's depressing to know them anyway. If you had no idea that an

00:20:54.000 asteroid was coming to hit the earth, you wouldn't care. It would just happen and you'd be dead.

00:20:58.760 Right. But now of course we would have, we would have information about that. We would be,

00:21:02.880 we would all be watching it approaching on the news and, and, you know, going through.

00:21:07.060 It'd be a live stream, right?

00:21:08.520 It'd be a live stream. Yeah, completely. But it's kind of, you know, we're just saturated with this,

00:21:13.580 with this drip feed of dread, you know, bad news from every corner of the world, 24 hours a day.

00:21:18.820 And we're also, I think this is really important. We're also confronting more existential threats

00:21:25.060 than we ever have in history. So an existential threat, meaning something that could actually

00:21:29.060 exterminate our entire species. Most of the existential threats that we face are things

00:21:34.480 that we've created. And so that's kind of an interesting thing that we're putting ourselves

00:21:39.880 through all of these psychological machinations because of situations that we've created.

00:21:45.640 We created nuclear weapons. You know, we, we are creating the automation that may put us out of

00:21:50.520 jobs. We're creating the artificial intelligence that may decide that we're in the way of its own

00:21:55.520 advancement and wipe us out. You know, all of these things are issues that, that, you know,

00:22:01.780 some people are concerned about and are running through in their heads all the time. And that's,

00:22:07.160 that's absolutely affecting our psychology. It's affecting our behavior. It's affecting our social

00:22:13.300 systems, our social fabric. You know, all of these things are being drastically affected. And it's,

00:22:18.680 this is a unique point in human history. There's never been another time when we face such

00:22:23.000 myriad existential threats. We're going to take a quick break for a word from our sponsors.

00:22:29.440 And now back to the show. So as you explore different companies, building bunkers for people,

00:22:34.960 what I found, there's like basically two general approaches on how in the, in this bunker building

00:22:39.340 world and how to do it. There's a communal approach where you build bunkers where a whole

00:22:43.280 bunch of people live together. And then there's like the rugged individualist where everyone has

00:22:47.420 like sort of like the 1950s in America model. Like everyone has their own bunker in their backyard

00:22:51.740 that they can go to. When you talk to people who in these two camps, like why would,

00:22:56.960 did you ever get a feel like why one person would be drawn to one approach or the other?

00:23:01.900 Yeah, it was really interesting. The, the backyard bunker builders would tell me that,

00:23:06.160 you know, the problem is other people. And so you, you can't trust people. You don't know who

00:23:10.400 you're going to end up in that bunker community with. And the people who are moving into communities

00:23:14.960 were saying, you're never going to survive on your own. You know, you need a community of people

00:23:19.660 with complimentary skills that can help people get through things. So it is very much a breakdown

00:23:25.880 between, you know, are we creating a new tribe to make it through together or is it, or is it,

00:23:32.040 you know, every, every man for himself and the, the cold war reaction to the existential threat of

00:23:39.320 nuclear war was definitely a, you know, I'm going to protect myself and my family and build a bunker 0.86

00:23:45.800 in my backyard. And I'm going to protect that bunker from my neighbors. It's interesting to me

00:23:51.120 that we're now seeing, I would say the majority of prepper communities or prepper developments

00:23:58.180 are communities. Now they're, they're people who are moving in together and seeking not just safety

00:24:05.280 in a material defensive sense, right. But, but also seeking community. People are kind of desperate to

00:24:11.740 find a connection again. And so the, the building of the bunker and the stockpiling of it and learning

00:24:18.760 about renewable technologies and, and all of that is part of the process of building a new community

00:24:24.560 of, of like-minded people that you might survive with. So let's talk about one of these companies

00:24:28.800 who, who's trying to build communities of bunkers. And it's the first one is the Vivos group. Tell us

00:24:33.940 about them and what's their approach and what are the people who are buying space from them?

00:24:37.440 Well, so just to be clear, the Vivos group is, is Robert Vecino. He's the guy who was going to buy

00:24:42.560 that bunker in England that initially got me, got me into this project. And when I spoke to him,

00:24:48.680 he was just in the process of acquiring these bunkers in South Dakota from the U S government.

00:24:55.460 These are World War II bunkers. They were built originally to store ordnance. So they were,

00:25:00.220 they were full of bombs, which is wonderfully ironic that you would build a bunker to protect bombs.

00:25:04.760 And now they're protecting people. But Roberts, his idea was that he would purchase this bunker

00:25:12.220 field. There's 575 semi-subterranean concrete bunkers there that stretch over an area about

00:25:19.880 three quarters the size of Manhattan. It's an absolutely huge facility. And his idea was that

00:25:25.440 he would buy this, this facility and then sell off the individual bunkers. Initially they were 25

00:25:30.800 grand. I think he's now in phase two. So it's, it's literally like a, like a real estate development,

00:25:36.060 you know, phase one sold out and now he's selling phase two and phase two is going for, for 35,000.

00:25:41.920 And I was there, I was there on day one. I met the first four preppers that moved into the place.

00:25:48.020 There was Milton. He was, uh, he worked for the Chicago VA as an IT manager. He eventually

00:25:54.120 quit his job and moved into the bunker full-time. Mark, an engineer from Minnesota. Tom, who's working

00:26:01.400 in, in biotech in Atlanta. A totally fascinating community of, of people from very different

00:26:08.460 backgrounds who came there with their families and they were interested in, in buying into this

00:26:13.820 community and building something new. And we're about, I think three years on now from my first

00:26:20.300 visit to that place. And I've, I've gone back periodically to check in with everyone and,

00:26:24.040 and it's, it's blooming. I mean, it's kind of incredible. There's, there must be 30 or 40

00:26:28.660 families and individuals living there now. And it's starting to look like a, like a typical

00:26:34.560 American suburban cul-de-sac, you know, with white picket fences and American flags hanging over the

00:26:40.940 blast doors. At the beginning of the, the coronavirus pandemic, I sent them a message to ask if they were

00:26:47.060 all going to be retreating to their bunkers. And, and they said, yep, we're all here. No one's

00:26:52.060 infected. Everyone's safe. No one's coming in or out. We've got all the supplies we need. And they

00:26:56.240 were happily barbecuing while the rest of us were panic shopping for toilet paper.

00:27:00.720 And so just to be clear, some of the people who own these bunkers plan to come to these bunkers

00:27:04.640 whenever there's an emergency, but there's some people who live there full-time already,

00:27:07.980 but these bunkers, they're just basically little cement rooms, right?

00:27:11.660 Exactly. Yeah. Like, you know, you could fit an 18 wheeler in there,

00:27:14.640 you know, they're about that size, but the, but the blast door, you couldn't actually get a vehicle

00:27:19.240 through the blast door, which are incredibly heavy. Or so the, the Vivos group, they seem to be

00:27:23.400 offering a very like basic, you know, relatively affordable bunker option. Like you get a, you get

00:27:27.820 the cement room and then you, it's up to you to deck it out how you want. But then you go visit this

00:27:33.160 company who is trying to build like a community of like a lux bunker for like high net worth individuals.

00:27:41.620 Let's talk about the, it's being built in an abandoned missile silo. So this is the other,

00:27:46.060 this is another irony, right? So we're, we're turning these, we're turning things that were

00:27:50.220 once housing missiles with that had warheads on them. Now we're going to go to them for safety.

00:27:55.560 Tell us about this company and what they're doing and who's, who's the, who are the type of people

00:27:59.080 who are joining this community? Yeah, this guy is called Larry Hall. He's a, another property

00:28:03.800 developer based in Kansas. And he purchased an Atlas F nuclear missile silo from the U.S.

00:28:11.180 government for $300,000 and then spent 10 million of his own money, turning this into a 15 story

00:28:18.560 inverted skyscraper. So there's, there's condos inside this missile silo now. And when you take,

00:28:25.660 you get in the elevator and it takes you down instead of up and you descend into the building

00:28:30.280 and he's selling half floor condos for 1.5 million, full floor condos for 3 million.

00:28:37.460 And the incredible thing about this facility, we'll get into the technical details, but the,

00:28:43.640 the most incredible thing about it is that he sold out within the first year. He sold every single

00:28:48.620 condo in there and I think made about 10 million in profits, which he's now using to build a second

00:28:54.260 one. He bought another one from the federal government. So you could eventually imagine this

00:28:59.600 kind of archipelago of subterranean citadels stretching across Kansas. I mean, in a, in a,

00:29:06.400 in a landscape, it's almost devoid of topography. You know, the only hills that you see are the

00:29:12.260 mounds sitting on top of the bunkers, but this could withstand a nuclear warhead. You know, you could drop

00:29:18.340 it right on this bunker and it would survive. They've got nuclear biological chemical air filters, 0.67

00:29:24.100 volcanic ash scrubbers, reverse osmosis, water filtration systems. I think he has three

00:29:30.960 different power systems. He's got solar, wind, and diesel generators as a backup. And he's got

00:29:37.780 diesel fuel for five years. So they could, they can run totally off the grid inside this bunker.

00:29:44.020 And he's also got a lot of amenities down there, a rock climbing wall, a dog park, swimming pool,

00:29:50.800 library, movie theater. It's a, you know, I was down there for a day and I could quite happily

00:29:58.840 stay down there for three months. I actually offered to finish my book in the bunker and he,

00:30:02.580 he kicked me out. But I mean, it's a, they even got a shooting range down there. And when I asked him

00:30:08.960 about all of those, you know, luxuries, he said, he said, these aren't luxuries. He said, if you're

00:30:14.040 going to lock people inside a bunker and tell them that they can't leave because it's in their own best

00:30:19.860 interest. And this is the service they paid for is we're going to protect them from what's

00:30:23.440 happening outside of the bunker. You've got to keep those people distracted. You know, his,

00:30:28.200 his goal was to, to have people feel a sense after they had gone into lockdown that they were

00:30:34.420 continuing life as they had been as much as possible. So he told me he wanted it to function

00:30:38.380 like a cruise ship. And there's an interesting, all of the bunker builders that I spoke to were kind

00:30:44.540 of obsessed with time. Like they, they had a, they had a number that they wanted to hit like three

00:30:49.900 months, one year, five years, and they would build the bunkers for that time. So this goes back to

00:30:55.700 what we were talking about. You know, you don't build for a specific threat, you build for a time

00:31:01.120 period. And so Larry Hall told me, you know, I've built this thing for five years. And in those five

00:31:07.260 years, there's going to be rotating jobs. We're going to make sure that everyone knows how to do

00:31:12.080 everything in this bunker, but we're also going to make sure that people are keeping themselves

00:31:16.400 entertained, that things are kept under control. They had a grocery store in there. And he said,

00:31:20.820 we, we insist that everyone comes grocery shopping every three days, just so that they

00:31:25.900 see each other. You know, we don't want anyone taking all the food and locking themselves in their

00:31:29.540 room. He put a great deal of thought into maintaining psychological and social equilibrium inside

00:31:37.320 the bunker. However, I think this is a really important point in contrast to South Dakota,

00:31:43.520 where all of those residents were, were building together, talking together, like they've already

00:31:49.240 built a community. In contrast to that, the people who had bought space in Larry Hall's bunker, who

00:31:55.120 obviously are millionaires and billionaires that can afford to spend that much money, cash, by the way,

00:32:01.060 for these bunkers, they had never lived in it. So, and they don't know each other. So you,

00:32:06.160 you really have no idea who you're going to end up locked in this bunker with for five years. And

00:32:10.120 I, I guess that's, you know, that's the beginning of the fictional horror story that you could write

00:32:14.360 about the survival condo. Right. It sounds like a Twilight Zone episode or like a 1950s existential

00:32:20.000 novel, like by Sartre or Camus or something like that. So that's the setup. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.

00:32:25.160 It's what Sartre said. Hell is other people. Right. You know, that's his play. No exit is just

00:32:30.360 three people stuck in a, stuck in a room. It's like the worst possible thing you can imagine.

00:32:34.020 All right. So we got that luck. So these are, these are companies who are catering towards

00:32:38.500 helping people build communities or live together, building bunkers and lots of people together.

00:32:42.700 But then there's still companies out there who are catering to people who just want a bunker in

00:32:46.000 their backyard. And so these people, they say they just want to take care of themselves. And it seems

00:32:50.480 like it's not just, they don't want to, they think other people are the problem. It seems like I got

00:32:55.500 the hunch from reading your book that these folks also like building a bunker in their backyard was

00:33:00.060 sort of an act of rebellion or they're trying to, it was about privacy. Like they didn't want

00:33:04.440 the government or like Amazon or Google to know they had this thing in their backyard.

00:33:09.440 Yeah. So I guess that's one of the arguments of the, of the backyard builders is they would say

00:33:14.300 that these communities, whether it's survival condo or X point or wherever they, those communities

00:33:20.620 are known, you know, they are on the map and they feel that those communities are going to become

00:33:26.240 a target if things go rapidly downhill. And so these backyard builders, you know, are buying bunkers.

00:33:33.620 Often they're having them delivered in the middle of the night and having them buried in their

00:33:37.980 backyards when no one's looking. And for a lot of them, they're concerned about surveillance,

00:33:46.140 tracking, they're worried about aerial imagery, satellites, the phone in their pockets, which are

00:33:52.540 tracking their every movements. And, and so the, the bunker for them is a, it's kind of like the

00:33:57.340 ultimate man cave, right? It's like where you can hide your phone doesn't work. No one knows that

00:34:01.760 it's there if you've done a good job hiding it. And yeah, for many of them, they, they explained it to

00:34:07.380 me as an act of resistance against the surveillance state. You know, they didn't want people, they wanted

00:34:12.360 to have something that was, that was theirs and that was secret and a secret they didn't need to share

00:34:17.500 with anyone. And I, it feels to me like that is now the primary reason for building backyard bunkers.

00:34:24.880 You know, no one is under the illusion that you're going to be able to survive for, you know, three

00:34:29.860 months in this bunker. I mean, particularly after, you know, we've all now suffered the self-isolation

00:34:36.500 of dealing with the pandemic and we know how we all start to crack, you know, just six weeks in.

00:34:42.180 I mean, it's just insufferable. You know, you want to get outside, you want to see people and talk to

00:34:45.840 people. So no, no one's under the illusion that they're going to be able to spend months or years

00:34:51.080 in their backyard bunker, but it does give them a place, you know, it's like a, it's like a storm

00:34:56.080 shelter, right? It gives them a place where they could, they could go down for two or three days

00:35:00.580 and make it through an event. And in the meantime, they can use it as a kind of, you know, secret

00:35:06.860 space to work on their own projects without being, without being tracked and surveilled.

00:35:11.700 And these things, these backyard bunkers, they're usually just like a corrugated pipe,

00:35:14.100 right? Like a big giant thing you put in the ground and you put dirt over it.

00:35:17.260 Yeah. So there's two major manufacturers. The first is, is Atlas shelters. And the second

00:35:22.460 is Rising S. And I spent time in both of their factories and they've got totally different

00:35:26.860 methods. Atlas S does these, these circular corrugated iron backyard shelters. And then

00:35:33.420 Rising S does these big blocky steel shelters that almost look like, like Legos. Like you could

00:35:39.940 piece them together. So if you, if you wanted a bigger bunker, you could just kind of weld

00:35:43.740 another one onto it and make, build a longer one. And these guys are hilarious. They're,

00:35:49.080 they're at war with each other on social media, on YouTube, just trash talking each other constantly,

00:35:55.260 you know, trying to find the other guy's bunker that has collapsed, you know, to prove that they're 0.72

00:36:00.420 a fraud. I mean, it's, it's a, they should, they should make a reality TV show about these

00:36:04.960 guys. I bet there will be. So we've been talking about bunker building the United States and we

00:36:10.900 typically think of prepping and survivalism as sort of an American phenomenon, but you visited

00:36:14.620 other countries where there's also prepping cultures. Any, any countries stood out to you

00:36:20.100 in particular? Like, how is it different from the United States? Well, it's so in, in Europe,

00:36:26.260 for instance, people don't have the space that we have. And so, you know, prepping for them

00:36:31.100 often was having an escape plan, stockpiling a bit of extra food. I mean, I saw people stuffing

00:36:38.860 things under their beds, you know, absolutely filling every nook and cranny in, in their tiny

00:36:45.320 apartments that they could to be better prepared. And then I went to, I went to Thailand because

00:36:50.920 there was a Canadian who had moved to Thailand to build this, what he called it an eco fortress.

00:36:56.380 It was kind of, it was like a, like a block citadel that he had built in an abandoned orchard

00:37:02.160 in, uh, just outside of Chiang Mai. It was the most bizarre location to build a bunker that

00:37:09.380 I can imagine in this, in this tiny village. But his idea was that it would, he wanted to

00:37:14.160 build this kind of off grid second home that was a bunker. I mean, it had a nuclear fallout

00:37:20.480 shelter and man traps and, uh, you know, CCTV systems. There were no windows on the bottom.

00:37:27.040 So it's incredibly difficult to assail. All of the windows are bulletproof, but he went,

00:37:32.600 he didn't want it to feel like a bunker. So it had this, the middle of the building was

00:37:37.100 an open atrium and light would flood through into the center of the building down to the

00:37:42.840 swimming pool. He was growing vines of passion fruit along the walls. I mean, it was a, it was

00:37:49.260 a beautiful location. And then he took me up to the roof where he had, he had a hatch that

00:37:54.060 he could lock from the roof. So if someone actually got into the building, he could get

00:37:57.860 onto the roof and lock the hatch. And that would be his, his final holdout. And, uh, he

00:38:03.500 was showing me his solar panel array on the roof. And I looked across the, the jungle that

00:38:08.640 was behind his bunker and there was a Buddhist watt there. And there's this like 20 foot tall

00:38:16.500 gold Buddha that was emerging from the jungle, staring at this doomsday bunker that a Canadian 0.99

00:38:22.120 had built in the middle of the jungle. It was just one of those moments that is just, I

00:38:26.920 mean, there were a lot of surreal moments in the course of writing this book, but I think

00:38:30.960 that that really takes the cake in terms of just being utterly shocked by people's ambition

00:38:36.700 and audacity and building these kinds of spaces. And that story, actually this, this didn't

00:38:42.680 make it into the book because it happened after I finished, after we published, but that story has

00:38:47.320 a really unfortunate ending. Augie, the guy who had built that, he worked on oil rigs. That's how

00:38:53.120 he made his money. And he was actually on an oil rig when the pandemic hit and he got stuck on the

00:39:00.140 rig for two months, I think, and then stuck for another two months because Thailand wouldn't let him

00:39:05.880 in because he didn't have a Thai passport. And so his wife and kid were, were inside his like

00:39:12.680 80% finished bunker while he got trapped kind of floating around the world in the midst of the

00:39:18.840 pandemic, precisely the thing that he had been building the bunker for.

00:39:23.140 Man. So, I mean, besides Thailand, you went to Australia and I thought that was interesting.

00:39:27.480 The prepping culture in Australia, they're prepping, their main concern is like wildfires.

00:39:31.800 That was like the wildfires they had a few years ago. That really kicked off prepping in Australia.

00:39:36.700 Yeah. They had terrible fires in Victoria. Hundreds of people died or burned to death. I mean,

00:39:41.680 it was a really tragic situation. And of course the bushfires have been escalating every year.

00:39:47.060 Last year, essentially the entire continent was on fire. I think over a billion animals died in those

00:39:53.320 wildfires. And so people there, they respond to that in two ways. And you'll find this is common

00:39:59.100 with preppers that they either want to bug in or bug out, right? Do you hunker down and stay where you

00:40:05.660 are to make it through things? Or do you pack up a rig, four-wheel drive, mobile bunker, and then take

00:40:12.500 off and get out of harm's way? So I met a lot of Australians that had built these like incredible

00:40:17.600 four-wheel drive vehicles with tents on top of them and every supply you could possibly imagine

00:40:23.320 towed in trailers. Those were pretty cool to watch people deploy in the middle of the bush,

00:40:29.700 you know, a hundred miles from anything. And they're like doing their laundry on a solar panel,

00:40:35.660 you know? But then there were also people who were buying, they're called fire bunkers. For about

00:40:40.780 25 grand, you can have someone put a bunker in your backyard, just like those nuclear fallout shelters

00:40:46.480 people were building during the Cold War. But these are, they're sealed, they're airtight. So if you've

00:40:53.140 got a fire that's raging through, you can get into this bunker and lock the hatch and it's fireproof.

00:41:00.000 And you've got an hour or two of oxygen in there and then a couple of backup tanks if you need to go

00:41:04.420 onto those. And essentially you just let the fire pass over you. And the idea is, you know, you might

00:41:10.280 lose your property, but you won't lose your life. And people, one of the guys that I talked to who was

00:41:15.860 building these bunkers said he was absolutely overwhelmed. I mean, he's got like, the backlog goes on for

00:41:21.100 years for projects. So if anyone wants to make some serious money, move to Australia and go open a

00:41:26.820 fire bunker company. Well, you mentioned bugging out. And so these in Australia, they're building

00:41:31.380 these rigs, but there's like, there's a market in the United States for building what's called bug

00:41:34.660 out vehicles. And they look like, like a war rigs from, you know, some apocalyptic movie. I mean,

00:41:40.280 like, so what are the, I mean, are, are these, are these bug out vehicles? Are they designed to get

00:41:43.960 you somewhere or are they just designed where you can like live in it too? It's a bit of both. So I visited these

00:41:49.280 guys in Utah that started buying Humvees from the U S military. And essentially when you buy it from

00:41:57.500 the military, you can get them with really low miles because sometimes they just use them to

00:42:01.160 drive around a base or whatever. And, but before they sell them, they take the, they take the armor

00:42:06.260 off of them. And so these guys were started making armor kits and they would buy the vehicles from the

00:42:12.260 government, put the armor back on them and then sell them on the private market. So again, you know,

00:42:17.640 private industry stepping in to do what government isn't doing is you can't, you know, you can't buy

00:42:21.980 these vehicles commercially. And these guys made it very clear that they didn't have any faith in

00:42:27.980 FEMA, for instance, to show up on time and ready to go in the case of an emergency. So they just

00:42:35.640 started building their own vehicles and the vehicles got more and more extreme. Eventually they started

00:42:41.600 putting gun turrets on top of them. They've got these kind of armored RVs, six wheel drive RVs

00:42:48.160 with beds and showers in them. And some of those are stocked with supplies as well. So you could

00:42:53.420 essentially live out of it. And what they told me, so they, they, they started going into disasters

00:43:00.340 and they, they told me that they never intended to build these vehicles to escape from something.

00:43:05.540 They built these vehicles to assist. So they, again, they were stepping in where the government,

00:43:10.000 they felt the government wasn't doing their job and they had gone into a couple of disasters.

00:43:15.260 Like there was some flooding in Wimberley, Texas, a couple of years ago, and they went into the flood

00:43:20.880 zone and were actually rescuing people. And they had a couple of encounters with FEMA where FEMA told

00:43:25.560 them to, to, to stop helping, which is kind of incredible because they felt like they were doing a,

00:43:31.100 a public service almost, but they've, they've now created a disaster relief crew and they've got

00:43:37.900 people on call all over the country who have bought these vehicles. And when disaster strikes

00:43:42.740 somewhere, they will call people in the local area who they know have the vehicles and are equipped

00:43:47.360 to help and they'll send them into the, the disaster zone.

00:43:50.740 Well, yeah, this is interesting because you talk about different approaches. Like there's different

00:43:53.180 like subcultures of prepping within the larger prepping culture. And these guys in Utah are in

00:43:58.460 Utah that you're, they're Mormon. And it seemed like you were, you went to Utah to also talk to Mormons

00:44:03.400 because Mormons, they do a lot of prepping, they got food storage and whatnot. And you kind of,

00:44:07.280 you saw like a subtle difference in how, what their approach was to say someone in some other

00:44:11.700 part of the United States. Yeah. You know, I mean, getting access to some of these facilities,

00:44:15.800 like the survival condo, the, the, uh, subterranean skyscraper in Kansas, it took me over a year.

00:44:22.980 You know, I had to just, I had to just badger the hell out of them to, to be able to get access to that.

00:44:26.780 When I went to Utah, the Mormons just let me into everything. They were, they're,

00:44:31.220 they're the easiest people to do field work with. I would roll up to, uh, these factories where they

00:44:38.860 were, they were producing oats, pasta, you know, long-term food storage that they were putting in

00:44:44.740 25 year shelf life cans. And those end up in, in people's basements all around Salt Lake City,

00:44:51.160 all around Utah, you know, they would just let me into the factory. Let me see everything volunteer

00:44:56.540 on the line if I wanted to. And then eventually I started going to people's houses and seeing their

00:45:01.240 basements and talking to them about their, the preparations they'd made. And they all made it

00:45:05.540 very clear that the, since the cold war, the church has asked them to prep. They've asked these

00:45:12.200 people to set aside at least three months worth of food. And the idea was, was never that that food

00:45:19.000 was to sustain themselves or their families solely. It was about being able to pool those resources in

00:45:25.900 the event of a disaster and make sure that everyone in the church could make it through. So again,

00:45:29.820 a community ethos. And there's another interesting connection there because one of the, I guess,

00:45:35.120 prophets of the church that was on the quorum of the 12 apostles, Ezra Taft Benson, he was one of

00:45:41.220 those people that was encouraging Mormon families to prep during the cold war. And he also ended up

00:45:47.460 advising the, I think it was the Eisenhower administration on.

00:45:52.600 Yeah. He was the secretary of agriculture.

00:45:55.100 Secretary of agriculture. Right. And, and so the idea that the government would encourage

00:46:01.060 everyday citizens to make their own preparations, I think that actually came from him. So it actually

00:46:06.300 came from the Mormon church.

00:46:08.520 So we, when you talk to these people, a lot of their focus is like on building the bunker and

00:46:14.300 preparing and being safe whenever, whatever event they're preparing for happens. But when you talk

00:46:19.440 to these people, like, did they have like, do you get an idea they had a plan of what they're going

00:46:22.500 to do after, like when they had to leave the bunker?

00:46:26.500 Yeah. The, the emergence into the post-apocalyptic world. I, you know, a lot of, um, a lot of these

00:46:33.540 preppers and particularly the bunker builders who I, who I call the dread merchants in the book,

00:46:39.340 you know, it's, it's in their interest to stoke people's fears. It's in their interest to, to make

00:46:45.860 people feel that the world is a terrible place and that we're, we're headed down the wrong track

00:46:51.460 because all of that's going to help sales. But when I would ask them, well, you know, what is the

00:46:55.660 plan on the other side? Then it would turn into this total fiction very often where it's like,

00:47:01.440 you know, well, it's, you know, a large percentage of the population is going to be gone.

00:47:06.980 There's going to be all this land, the economy's going to boom, there's going to be plentiful

00:47:12.360 resources. So it's this kind of fantasy that we see playing out in post-apocalyptic films and

00:47:19.820 literature, right? But I mean, we all kind of like to think about the idea of, of being in a world

00:47:24.660 that's still full of stuff, like full, you know, grocery stores are packed, but there's no one there.

00:47:29.520 You know, it's the kind of zombie narrative and you can just grab whatever you want and kind of make

00:47:34.040 your own way through the world. Americans love those, those narratives, you know, that they'll

00:47:37.880 just be totally on their own. But realistically, I didn't hear people talking about what they were

00:47:43.800 going to do, what the plan was, how would they rebuild, you know, how would, how would they find

00:47:48.320 community again? And I think that that's one of the, the major blind spots in all of these scenarios.

00:47:55.000 I have to say that over, after spending years with them, I, I became convinced that, you know,

00:48:00.760 we are in a unique point in human history. We do face more threats than we ever have in the past.

00:48:05.760 The possibility of things going wrong is in front of us all the time because of the way we've built

00:48:11.160 our, our society. You know, it's incredibly fragile, the infrastructural supply lines and,

00:48:16.380 and global trade that we depend on, the technology that we depend on now. It's, it's all put us in a,

00:48:22.380 in a very fragile position. But, you know, I didn't hear a lot of people telling me

00:48:27.400 what the alternative was. No, no one wants to go back to some, you know, there's not some

00:48:34.740 Edenic time in the past that people want to return to. And they're fantasizing about this future where

00:48:40.200 things will be different because they're frustrated with the present, but they're not necessarily telling

00:48:45.000 me what that future is going to be.

00:48:46.800 Well, and so, I mean, I think it's interesting, sort of the conclusion that I got from the book was,

00:48:52.340 so we typically in the broader culture, people look at people who build bunkers, the prepping

00:48:56.300 community is sort of, they're out there, right? It's like, it's a subculture, kind of weird,

00:49:00.880 maybe a little bit crazy. But I got the idea that after spending so much time with these guys and

00:49:05.400 talking, you just said that, like, there is a logic, like they are actually being pretty rational

00:49:09.920 because there's so, as you said, there's so many potential things that could wipe us out.

00:49:13.980 It would just make sense to prepare for that moment.

00:49:16.500 Or not even wipe us out, but just, I mean, just cause chaos. You know, the pandemic has caused chaos.

00:49:21.800 I mean, who knows what's going to happen with the election, right? I mean, we're constantly,

00:49:25.520 we're constantly facing all sorts of turmoil. And yeah, it came to feel like these preppers are

00:49:32.580 rationally responding to an irrational world. You know, things are complicated and frustrating.

00:49:39.560 And many of them felt, you know, helpless in being able to change any of this. You know,

00:49:44.400 what can they do about the climate crisis? What can they do about nuclear weapons? You know,

00:49:49.840 it feels kind of hopeless and helpless. And so building a bunker for them was about taking

00:49:54.880 control of their immediate parameters. You know, if you can at least control what's in front of you

00:50:00.400 and what's around you, then for many of them, it gave them a sense of peace. And so, yeah, I kind of,

00:50:05.900 I was shocked how calm many of them were. I kind of expected them to be, as you say, kind of kooky

00:50:12.980 and weird and paranoid. And that's not at all what I found. I found communities of people,

00:50:19.320 and here I'm talking about the preppers themselves, not the people selling bunkers who are hysterical for

00:50:24.520 the most part. But, you know, the preppers themselves that are moving into these communities

00:50:28.380 and buying these bunkers are just, you know, they're just everyday people doing jobs like you

00:50:33.300 and me. And they're frustrated and they're scared, they're worried, and they're trying to take control

00:50:38.520 of what they can to give themselves and their families a bit of peace.

00:50:43.000 Have you become a prepper a little bit since you finished this book?

00:50:47.260 Yeah. I'm supposed to be in Ireland right now, but I've ended up remote teaching because of the

00:50:52.580 pandemic. And so I came back to California and I bought a quarter acre of land in the forest. And

00:50:59.900 I've got a fantastic internet connection out here, but everything's super cheap. And I'm starting to

00:51:06.080 stockpile just some basic stuff. I mean, I'm not building a bunker or anything, but, you know,

00:51:10.960 I'm just gathering some tools, starting to do my own projects, learning how to do electrical wiring.

00:51:16.540 I bought a 1972 GMC long bed pickup that I love. I've been working on that all the time. I mean,

00:51:23.620 you know, these are things that I've been sitting in front of screens for 15 years, you know,

00:51:27.480 writing books, doing research, being an academic. And for, you know, that was one of the revelations

00:51:33.420 that I came to from this project is I don't know how to do anything. So prepping for me is actually,

00:51:39.420 I'm just building up skills and giving myself a little bit of space and breathing room to be

00:51:44.660 able to do that. And I think it's, I mean, I'm finding it to be incredibly valuable. I can feel

00:51:49.480 my confidence building with everything that I learn how to do. And that's enough preparation for me,

00:51:55.020 just knowing that, you know, if something does go wrong, I've got a kind of basic skill set that can

00:51:59.760 get me through some things. I don't necessarily feel a need to start pouring concrete, but maybe

00:52:04.800 I'll get there one day.

00:52:05.760 Maybe one day. Well, Bradley, this has been a great conversation. Where can people go to learn

00:52:08.820 more about the book and your work?

00:52:10.160 My website's bradleygarrett.com. You can find me on social media. My handle is Goblin Merchant.

00:52:16.360 You can find me at Goblin Merchant on Twitter, Instagram, wherever. And you can find the book,

00:52:21.360 Bunker, Building for the End Times, everywhere, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, wherever you want to find it.

00:52:26.700 Hopefully go into a bookshop, if you can, wherever you are. And I hope everyone enjoys it. I really

00:52:31.580 enjoy getting feedback from it. So if anyone does pick it up and read it, shoot me an email.

00:52:36.160 Well, Bradley Garrett, thanks for your time. It's been a pleasure.

00:52:38.140 Brad, it's been great. Thank you so much, man.

00:52:40.260 My guest today was Bradley Garrett. He's the author of the book, Bunker. It's available on

00:52:43.440 amazon.com and bookstores everywhere. You can find out more information about his work at his

00:52:46.600 website, bradleygarrett.com. Also check out our show notes at aom.is slash bunker. We find links to

00:52:52.000 resources where we delve deeper into this topic.

00:52:56.700 Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast. Check out our website at

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00:53:33.900 Until next time, this is Brett McKay. Reminding you not only listen to the Win Podcast, but put what

00:53:37.740 you've heard into action.

The Art of Manliness - October 07, 2020

#650： Why People Are Building Bunkers for the Apocalypse

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