That feeling of impending doom? Don’t ignore it. Doomsday may very well be proper across the nook, through pure catastrophe or a block occasion that includes DJ Khaled, even when most of us don’t spend a lot time excited about it. Our planet’s historical past is stuffed with shut calls — huge asteroids practically colliding with Earth, supervolcanoes, plagues, the Cuban missile disaster. And as of late now we have Kim Jong Un, who acts like he may push the large, pink button simply to see what it does, and different real-life Bond villains (and wannabes) with buttons of their very own. The near-end now not appears that far-fetched.
So why aren’t fallout shelters extra widespread? No one I do know has one, and I do know many individuals, a few of whom are rich sufficient to stay in million-dollar houses. If that sounds such as you, take into account this: What’s one other 60 grand or so between buddies? It’ll get you a pleasant 200-square-foot underground shelter, able to withstanding a nuke. An excessive amount of? You may get a precast concrete bunker half the dimensions for about $20,000.
If the world as we all know it ends, you’ll have someplace to go. If it doesn’t, you need to use the house as a den or a playroom — helpful within the occasion of a later cataclysm since repopulating the planet could also be first in your new to-do checklist.
There’s, nonetheless, an inconvenient downside. Prior planning of this nature could make you appear to be a kook, particularly in the event you received’t cease speaking about it. That goes double you probably have a devoted YouTube channel. And lots of people who’ve fallout shelters have made it their factor. Meaning when the mud settles, those that stay will largely be doomsday preppers, aka crackpots. Except we would like them to inherit the Earth, we’ll must dilute the gene pool with some well-adjusted, smart people — the sort who would by no means consider constructing a bunker.
Attempting to speak regular individuals into bunker-building is ill-advised. When you’re taking place that route, brace your self for arguments in opposition to your place, chief of which need to do with necessity — or slightly a scarcity thereof. “I don’t want one,” says the person with a Rolex wrapped round his wrist, a ship he by no means makes use of in his storage and a piano he doesn’t know the right way to play in his front room. Since when didn’t needing one thing get in the best way of shopping for it? Put together for the flood, lest you drown like Noah’s neighbors, I say. A false sense of safety is harmful in the perfect of occasions, not to mention occasions like these.
Masters of the universe, with or with out a nuclear button, don’t know the right way to divert a world-ending asteroid or electromagnetic photo voltaic flare. Nor can they cease a tsunami, earthquake or hurricane. These are massively sophisticated points, requiring a lot of cash, time and effort to unravel — which is boring. It’s cheaper, faster and extra enjoyable to construct bunkers for themselves and hope, for the sake of the remainder of us, that the day by no means comes. If or when it does, all of the king’s horses and all of the king’s males will crawl into their hidey-holes whereas the remainder of us are left to burn.
So I’m constructing my very own, stocked to the brim with Twinkies and potassium iodide tablets. I urge you to do the identical. Keep in mind, you’re solely a whack job in the event you go on and on about it (like I’m doing now.) However in the event you set it and neglect it, nobody’s the wiser.
If I shut my eyes, I can see it: You’re in your bunker and I’m in mine, and I’m holding a CB radio and looking for you in a post-apocalyptic world.
“That is Tamim Almousa, chief of the Construct a Bunker motion. Is there anybody on the market?”
“Sure, that is DJ Khaled, do you learn me?”
Rattling it.
Tamim Almousa is a copywriter and screenwriter.
