That feeling of impending doom? Don’t ignore it. Doomsday may very well be proper across the nook, by way of pure catastrophe or a block social gathering that includes DJ Khaled, even when most of us don’t spend a lot time fascinated with it. Our planet’s historical past is filled with shut calls — large asteroids practically colliding with Earth, supervolcanoes, plagues, the Cuban missile disaster. And today we now have Kim Jong Un, who acts like he may push the large, purple 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 person I do know has one, and I do know many individuals, a few of whom are rich sufficient to stay in million-dollar properties. If that sounds such as you, take into account this: What’s one other 60 grand or so between associates? It’ll get you a pleasant 200-square-foot underground shelter, able to withstanding a nuke. An excessive amount of? You will 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 should utilize 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 may be, nevertheless, an inconvenient downside. Prior planning of this nature could make you appear to be a kook, particularly for those who received’t cease speaking about it. That goes double in case you have a devoted YouTube channel. And lots of people who’ve fallout shelters have made it their factor. Which means when the mud settles, those that stay will principally be doomsday preppers, aka crackpots. Except we wish them to inherit the Earth, we’ll have to dilute the gene pool with some well-adjusted, smart people — the type who would by no means consider constructing a bunker.
Making an attempt to speak regular folks into bunker-building is ill-advised. If you happen to’re taking place that route, brace your self for arguments towards your place, chief of which must do with necessity — or relatively 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 way to play in his lounge. Since when didn’t needing one thing get in the way in which 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 one of the best of instances, not to mention instances like these.
Masters of the universe, with or with out a nuclear button, don’t know the 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 numerous cash, time and effort to resolve — 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 capsules. I urge you to do the identical. Keep in mind, you’re solely a whack job for those who go on and on about it (like I’m doing now.) However for those who set it and overlook 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.
