Doomsday business is booming

Reality TV shows and emergency shelters, books and supplies of freeze-dried food. Whether or not you believe in the Mayan prophecy, Peak Oil or Global flooding, there is big money being made out of the coming collapse.

From society’s wealthiest and powerful Wall Streeters to rural bug-out types, people are preparing for the worst, and sparing no expense on elaborate underground shelters, buying years’ worth of non-perishable foods and stockpiling fuel and ammunition. Some have embraced the term “preppers,” although precisely what they are preparing for varies.

Stocking up on the appropriate gear, ammunition, food and shelter to survive a nuclear meltdown, asteroid, earthquake, solar flare or some other catastrophe, then acquiring the materials you’ll need to rebuild a community after the dust settles costs some self-described “preppers” hundreds of thousands of dollars.

So far, Patrick Geryl estimates he’s already spent more than $130,000 on his survival preparations.

Author of “How to Survive 2012” and eight other books about a catastrophe destined to occur this year, Geryl believes that a shift in the Earth’s poles is going to result in solar flares, volcanic eruptions and earthquakes that will throw the world into a nuclear meltdown. The dreaded event will occur on December 21, when the Mayan calendar allegedly ends, he said.

Geryl plans to survive the turmoil in a small wooden bunker far from the nuclear radiation in South Africa, where he can live off the grid for about a year and rebuild a community with other survivors.

In order to do so, he has spent years stocking up on nearly 100 survival essentials, including guns and ammunition, water purification tablets, waterproof matches, a drafting table for charting stars in the sky — even condoms to use for carrying water. Books with survival tips, like a guide to edible plants, herbs and mushrooms, are also crucial, because he won’t have access to the internet when disaster strikes, he said. He’s still accumulating all of the necessities he’ll need and is constantly adding more items to the list. [Check out his survival list here]

To get to South Africa from his home in Belgium during a worldwide catastrophe is another issue. Geryl said he is currently considering sailing there in an “unsinkable yacht,” which is made by a company called Etap in Belgium. However, he said the yachts, which have double walls and are insulated with foam so that they are supposedly unable to capsize, cost more than $100,000, so he doesn’t know if he’ll be able to afford one.

Robert Bast, 46, is a prepper who works in Internet marketing during the day and runs an online community called Survive2012.com when he’s off the clock. Bast, who lives in Melbourne, Australia with his wife and three children, has spent more than $350,000 preparing for “the end of the world as we know it.”

The end of the world, he says, could come at any time and result from any type of disaster. “What is certain is that in my lifetime, there is a strong likelihood that there will be a catastrophe of some kind — the sun destroying power grids, a flu pandemic that kills millions, an asteroid or meteor or comet striking earth or a magnetic pole shift,” said Bast.

Bast has spent about $5,000 on stockpiles of food and water, and $11,000 on equipment including gas cookers, generators, batteries, water purifiers and solar power. He also purchased roughly an acre of land that’s a 75 minute drive from Melbourne and 1,500 feet above sea level (in order to stay high and dry in case of a flood or tsunami). He has built a house there, as well as a bunker to serve as his “safe spot” in the event of an emergency. Together, the land, buildings and bunker have cost him a total of about $330,000. He’s also spent another $10,000 on an 8-year old Toyota HiLux pickup truck to drive to his safe spot.

To afford all of this, Bast has been saving money from his job for years. He has a mortgage on his primary residence, and he took out a second mortgage for the home he built as his safe house.

Phil Burns, a co-founder of the American Preppers Network and the subject of “Meet the Preppers” on Animal Planet is preparing for all types of disaster scenarios.

Among the more ominous: A natural disaster or economic collapse that causes mass starvation, causing people to become so desperate for food and shelter that they lose their minds and resort to violence. In the preparedness world, these people are often referred to as “zombies.”

To ensure his survival in the event of a disaster like this, Burns, 38, has been prepping for years. He now has a year’s worth of food in storage, including 4,000 pounds of wheat, beans and rice, that cost about $5,000. He even has 20 bottles of different food flavorings, so that “one day I could have vanilla rice and the next I could have orange rice — because just plain rice gets old.”

He also has an RV and trailer to use as a “bug out vehicle” to get to his “bug out location,”which is a fully-stocked 40-acre retreat tucked away in the mountains of Idaho.

“We realized that we were totally unprepared should something happen,” said Jack Jobe, who was prompted to prep for a natural disaster after the 2010 earthquake in Haiti.
Jobe, who will be featured on an upcoming episode of the NatGeo’s “Doomsday Preppers,” has invested about $3,000 in a safe room in the cellar of his family’s Colorado home. The basement bunker  has reinforced  steel  doors, along with two 55-gallon drums of water, a four-month supply of food and a cache of guns and ammunition.
“Fleeing won’t be an option,” Jobe told FoxNews.com. “We are ready to survive in place.”
In addition to “Doomsday Preppers,” a Discovery show entitled “Doomsday Bunkers” also chronicles the growing trend of prepping for everything short of Armageddon. The popularity of these reality shows underscores the fascination with bunkers, freeze-dried food, guns, ammo and everything else people will need if and when society collapses.
It’s the prospect of class warfare, not natural disasters, that drives some of the nation’s wealthiest people to prep. Growing tension between the haves and the have-nots could boil over, with pitchfork and torch-bearing masses outside their gates, they fear. With that in mind, $200,000 for the Vivos 8, an underground chamber with 24-inch thick concrete and steel walls, is no obstacle. Other luxury bunkers have stainless steel appliances, generators that can run for months and full plumbing.
“We are seeing an awareness among the more affluent community of scenarios that might happen, and these people have the money to address it,”  Roy Edwards, president and founder of All Secure Global, a preparedness consulting company that caters to higher-end clientele, told FoxNews.com.
Preparing for nuclear attack, societal breakdown or biblical disaster is nothing new in the U.S. In the 1950s, backyard bomb shelters were all the rage. They were typically no-frills – some bunkbeds, shelves full of canned goods and as much water as a fearful dad could carry through the hatch. These days, a big enough bankroll can buy subterranean dwellings with the amenities of a hotel suite.
Edwards says that he had a client spend as much as $15 million on multiple shelters and supplies recently.
“The rhetoric has escalated,” Edwards said. “This past year with Occupy Wall Street has hit home and class warfare has become a real possibility. When these types of things happen, the level of awareness goes up.
“People are prepared to pay it,” he continued. “What is the safety and security of your family worth?”
Base bunkers start at $40,000, although that doesn’t include the cost of delivery, excavation and installation. The price can go as high as a customer’s tastes demand. The Vivos 8 mentioned above can accommodate up to eight people and is outfitted like a luxury yacht. In addition to its electro-magnetic pulse-proof walls, it features a fully functional kitchen and bathroom, a living room outfitted with a TV and stereo system and even a hydroponic gardening system. Multiple Vivos 8s can even be connected by tunnel systems.
“We had a number of people who wanted their own setup,” said Robert Vicino, founder and CEO of California-based Vivos. “So we decided to provide a turnkey service. You can literally build an underground city with these bunkers.”
Vicino founded his company three years ago, setting up two such subterranean cities using shelters originally built during the height of the cold war. The two large, multi-story shelters, located in Indiana and Nebraska, can house hundreds of people and include medical facilities, gyms and common areas for meals and social activities. The shelters are set up much like a time share, with a $50,000 fee buying “part ownership” in the facility.
Survival depends on more than simply shelter. Preppers also stock up on food with extremely long shelf life as well as weapons and ammunition.
“I’ve had many wealthy people approach me asking about firearms and how to build up food and water storage,” said Jason Hanson, a personal security specialist and former CIA officer. “I had one doctor who approached me at a dinner party recently who told me that he used to think that guns were the devil, but due to the financial unrest, he changed his mind. He asked me to teach him how to use them.”
“Many more wealthy types have been approaching me for help and they are generally well-educated people. It’s all because they read the headlines are concerned that the dollar could disappear.”
Dr. Carole Lieberman, a psychologist with UCLA’s Neuropsychiatric Institute and author of the book, “Coping with Terrorism: Dreams Interrupted,” said the need to feel prepared for dire circumstances is hard-wired into all of us, although some go to greater extremes.
“There’s a great contrast between the prepping community and the rest of the world,” Lieberman said. “But most of us are living in the extreme of denial which is just as out of touch with reality.”
Some degree of preparing for calamity “is necessary, but it shouldn’t take over your life.”
As long as Jobe knows his family can survive anything, he is okay with being marginalized.
“A lot of people call us outlaws,” Jobe said. “But if you have health and auto insurance, what is wrong with insuring you and your family’s safety, too? Why does it make us outlaws?”