When I set out to explore the world of prepping, I was unsure of what to expect – part of me imagined something theatrical, such as zombie apocalypse kits or nuclear bunkers.
But as I ventured into the mid Wales countryside, it became clear I had fallen victim to the stereotypes.
Leigh Price, 51, from Builth Wells, said he was not prepping for hordes of the undead roaming the landscape, as many might assume, but for much more real threats.
Huh?
War, for most people, brings confusion, fear and destruction. But for Ron Hubbard, it brings something else altogether: opportunity.
The 63-year-old Texan builds bunkers designed to help customers survive drone attacks, ballistic missile strikes or even nuclear Armageddon. With the US war with Iran sparking fears of World War Three, business has never been better for his company, Atlas.
“I’ve been inundated with calls”, Hubbard says in an interview with The Telegraph, describing how enquiries from Americans had gone up “tenfold” since the war with Iran broke out on Saturday. Hubbard claims two senior Cabinet members in the Trump administration are amongst his clients.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio offered a surprisingly conciliatory speech at the Munich Security Conference, and European leaders gave addresses that responded to Prime Minister Mark Carney’s powerful Davos speech and the need for a stronger, more independent Europe.
To cut through the messaging and diplomatic fog, the National Post spoke with former CIA deputy director and acting director John McLaughlin — who was in Munich — for his inside take on allied perceptions of America’s global role, U.S.-Canada ties, and intel-sharing risks and opportunities. Today, McLaughlin is a professor of practice at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.
It is no coincidence that the world’s first cities were built where water was abundant. From the Nile and the Yangtze to the Thames, reliable access to freshwater allowed settlements to grow into cities. Water not only mattered for drinking, but for hygiene, waste removal, agriculture and transport. Rivers were arteries of commerce as much as sources of life: where water flowed, cities prospered; where it failed, they declined. Anyone who saw the Nile, wrote Herodotus 2,500 years ago, needed only the most “basic powers of observation” to realise that Egypt was “the gift of the river”.
Today, we are already in the midst of a deep and deepening crisis of water availability. Though more than 70% of the world’s surface is covered by the stuff, almost all of it is seawater. In fact, on average, only around one in every 10,000 drops is accessible freshwater that humans can easily use. Demand for it has surged as global populations have grown, diets have changed and cities have expanded into arid regions from Riyadh to Mexico City.
Western civilization arose in the 8th century B.C. Greece. Some 1,500 city-states emerged from a murky, illiterate 400-year-old Dark Age. That chaos followed the utter collapse of the palatial culture of Mycenaean Greece.
But what re-emerged were constitutional government, rationalism, liberty, freedom of expression, self-critique, and free markets – what we know now as the foundation of a unique Western civilization.
The Department of National Defence is scrambling to figure out how it will clothe, equip and train hundreds of thousands of new reservists envisioned under an ambitious mobilization proposal that Canada’s top military commander describes as a work in progress.
Similarly, in what may be an ominous sign of the times, the department has established a key position dedicated solely to growing the military in the event of a major crisis.
Internal documents obtained by CBC News show the military buildup will, at the moment, proceed slowly because the defence industry is either overwhelmed — or not equipped for the ramp-up.
I suspect the real reason for Ottawa arming it’s loyal Elbow People is the anticipated need to put down a citizen revolt.
People are fed up with seeing Canada destroyed by 3rd World immigration and DEI never mind the blatant corruption of the carpet-bagging Carney government.
Within Silicon Valley, Nick Land is seen almost as a mythic figure. Tech pioneer Marc Andreessen, an official advisor to the White House, lists him as a “patron saint” of his thinking. You may have heard him described as a founding member of the “Dark Enlightenment,” a movement of online right-wingers skeptical of liberal democracy. Land’s name comes up in academic circles, online mythology and Valley folklore. For some, he’s a prophet; for others something more sinister.
“He’s really into demons,” explained Conrad Flynn on a recent Tucker Carlson Show episode about the occult. “Land will talk about being in communication with Satan… the legend around Land is he had been possessed by at least three or four demons.” It makes for a good story, the crypto-fascist Satanist of the tech world.
Mark Zuckerberg is said to have started work on Koolau Ranch, his sprawling 1,400-acre compound on the Hawaiian island of Kauai, as far back as 2014.
It is set to include a shelter, complete with its own energy and food supplies, though the carpenters and electricians working on the site were banned from talking about it by non-disclosure agreements, according to a report by Wired magazine.
A six-foot wall blocked the project from view of a nearby road.
Asked last year if he was creating a doomsday bunker, the Facebook founder gave a flat “no”. The underground space spanning some 5,000 square feet is, he explained, “just like a little shelter, it’s like a basement”.
Billionaires are prepared to leave the world behind
It would be hard to exaggerate what is at stake in this anxious and uncertain historical moment. In Europe and the Anglosphere, ideological polarisation is fomenting political violence. Popular anger at governing elites is coming to a boil. AI has begun to eliminate jobs across multiple industries, not just for symbolic thinkers — data analysts, coders, content creators, translators, tax preparers, accountants — but for anyone whose work can be done by robots. And tech multibillionaires are behaving like masters of the universe on a gambling spree in a cosmic casino, wagering humanity’s future on a roll of the dice.
You’ll need help getting to your compound in New Zealand, and your helpers will want to come too.
For many years I flew airplanes out of the Santa Monica Airport, 2 miles from my home. I told a fellow pilot that one benefit of the license and the plane was the ability to extract my family from a societal breakdown. He agreed but noted that the difficulty would be the last hundred yards before the airport.
Now comes news that American billionaires have prepared compounds in New Zealand in case of apocalypse. Thoughtfully stocked with all that the group would require—air, water, food, entertainment—they stand ready to receive the ultraprivileged. Well and good, but their fantasy, like mine, is flawed. For what is the size of the group for which they foresee transportation, protection and perpetual care?
Vegans and Muslims must be catered for in a possible food apocalypse, experts have said, warning that Britain is woefully unprepared for “shocks” to the supply chain.
Professor Tim Lang, a professor of food policy, said that if there was, for example, a cyberattack or Russian assault that knocked out Britain’s “vulnerable” food chain, ration packs would need to offer comfort.
In a week in which former allies in a redividing globe separately commemorated the 80th anniversary of the end of the second world war, the sense of a runaway descent towards a third world war draws ever closer.
The implosion of Pax Americana, the interconnectedness of conflicts, the new willingness to resort to unbridled state-sponsored violence and the irrelevance of the institutions of the rules-based order have all been on brutal display this week. From Kashmir to Khan Younis, Hodeidah, Port Sudan and Kursk, the only sound is of explosions, and the only lesson is that the old rules no longer apply.
Indeed Fiona Hill, the policy analyst and adviser to the UK government on its imminent strategic defence review, argues the third world war has already started, if only we would recognise it.
Every home in Europe should have a three-day crisis survival kit, including bottled water, canned food, a torch and supplies of toilet paper, the European Union has said.
As well as stockpiling, citizens across Europe are being told to draw up a “household emergency plan” of how to get through the first 72 hours of a crisis, “including the possibility of armed aggression against member states”.
Meanwhile in the USA …
There is no plan to feed Britain in a crisis
In the dystopian drama The Last of Us, a fungal virus has spread through foodstuffs turning infected humans into zombies. The survivors live in ghettos, among the ruins, armed to avoid a gruesome living death. They grow their own food to avoid the infected produce. Preppers and survivalist whackos find that their hour has come. Clean food has become a precious thing.
That’s where my interest in the show kicked in, because the future of our food system is something that I’m a little obsessed with. I am haunted by the memory of those empty supermarket shelves during the Covid pandemic, which didn’t quite lead to a food panic, but sent chills through anyone thinking about food security. We learned then that our just-in-time food system wasn’t very resilient and seemed vulnerable to collapse if given a major shock. (Spoiler Alert: Covid is nowhere near the grim end of the scale for disaster planning.)
CEO of Drone manufacturing company that has government contracts, gives interesting take on what’s happening in NJ. pic.twitter.com/tAbMdMETQC
— Kory Yeshua (@KoryYeshua) December 15, 2024
h/t XC
