PREPPERS, PREPPERS EVERWHERE AND NARY A DOOMSDAY IN SIGHT!

A while back, I discussed a guy who spent $130,000 in preparations for Doomsday December 21, 2012…that is, preparing for Doomsday…NOT!

However, an Australian gentleman has him beat by hundreds-of-thousands of buckos. Internet marketer by day, survivalist musketeer by night! All for one and one for me!

The Aussie has thus spent $350,000 getting ready for the Armageddon. He hopes to protect his wife and three children for a Doomsday disaster that could happen at any time.

“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," he bleated.

In preparation for this, he has a stockpile of food and water valued at $5,000 and generators, batteries, gas cookers, water purifiers, solar power collectors and other items valued at $11,000. On an acre of land more than an hour from Melbourne, he has built a house and a bunker 1,500 above sea level to keep him safe from those pesky tsunamis. Adding the cost of the land, bunker and buildings as well as $10,000 for a used Toyota pickup to get him and his family to the site, his expenditure list has swollen and, voila!, he’s looking at an outlay of $330,000.

(As an aside: $10,000 for a used Toyota pickup? Really? Why not buy a new one for a couple of thousand more? I mean, it’s how you plan to get from the city to the bunker! Pretty important.)

While many of us save money for vacations, kids’ college, a nice retirement, the Aussie has been saving money for years for his Doomsday retreat. Plus he has mortgage his home and taken a second mortgage on it all to pay for the retreat.

As an addendum, I’ll add this from CNN:

“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.’”

Sorry, but that’s the oddest zombie apocalypse scenario I’ve heard so far.