For $50,000 (per adult), an outfit known as Vivos will save you a place in one of its self-contained survival shelters. The company claims to have a "network" of these underground complexes -- 20 in the U.S. and two in Europe -- to save your well-heeled ass in case of:When the shit hits the fan, all you have to do is get to your assigned TEOTWAWKI timeshare -- each of which houses up to a thousand "members" -- before Vivos locks the door. Now that's (you should pardon the expression) turn-key survival.
Naturally, sales of doomsday shelters are up between 20% and 1,000% (depending on who's doing the bragging) in the wake of Japan's earthquake-tsunami-radiation disaster.
Whenever I hear about this kind of "assurance of life" racket, I know that P.T. Barnum was right -- the whole thing strikes me as designed to separate naive people from their money. For the moment, though, let's suppose that it's the real deal, just as Vivos claims it is.
Fundamentally, the only difference between a big-bucks bunker and a community shelter is the price. Inhabiting the former will be the less fortunate and the ill-prepared; in the latter will be wealthy hamsters.
No guns. No knives. No smoking.
Both groups will become nothing more than refugees. One, we may presume, would be free to go if they so choose, while the other paid dearly for the privilege of being imprisoned -- if, that is, they can even get to their gilded gaol.
And that -- actually getting there -- is among the myriad flaws of bugging out in general and Vivos-type schemes in particular. Public panic will set in within an hour after a catastrophic event (or word of its imminence) and, as a result, order will start breaking down. Roads will clog with evacuees. Opportunistic crime will spike and carefully prepared BOVs will be stolen, stripped or otherwise rendered useless.
No, thanks.
My family and I have made very different choices. We cultivate a preparedness mindset, hone our skills and plan to shelter-in-place unless we have a damned good reason to leave -- 'cause in the end (again, please pardon the expression), there's no place like home.
(Oh, by the way -- if you're really into the "continuance of life" thing and want to throw money at preserving the human race instead of your own survival, Vivos offers a CryoVault deal, too. "Join us in the gene pool," they say. Talk about chilly...)
"...pole shift, super volcano eruptions, solar flares, earthquakes, tsunamis, and asteroids...nuclear bombs, bio terrorism, chemical warfare...the return of Planet X (known as Nibiru) and the massive solar system disturbances it will cause."
