T
he rabbit hole I vanished down this week
was dug with a foldable spade. Not, strictly,
a rabbit hole then. A hole made by preppers.
A prepper hole. A young woman in Scotland
who didn’t want to be named told a newspaper
that she was preparing for the apocalypse
“just in case”. She had acquired a wind-up
radio and a camping stove, and she had
planted some potatoes in pots on a balcony.
Come the end times, she will at least have
mash and The Archers.
From there, don’t ask me how or why, I found a
story about a worried man in Utah building a Faraday
cage in his bathroom and another story about lots of
worried men in Kansas filling their basements
with guns and tinned hot dogs. Further down the
hole, past prepper expos, prepper superstores and
prepper billionaires building land arks in the
Antipodes, I reached Vivos, which claims to be
“the backup plan for humanity” but is an apocalyptic
estate agent.
For an upfront, nonrefundable deposit of
$25,000, I could secure a lease on a bit of underground
bunker in South Dakota. Could I get to South
Dakota in an apocalypse? Would I want to? Probably
and definitely not. Don’t worry — Vivos caters for
paranoid Europeans too. It’s busy converting a Cold
War tunnel system in eastern Germany, which is much
more convenient. There are two options: a private
two-storey section of tunnel with enough room for
a gym, a billiard table and staff quarters for $2 million,
or a “semi-private” suite for just $35,000 per person.
“With each family’s participation in this epic
project comes a huge responsibility to the future
survival of mankind,” the marketing document read,
like Foxtons with zombies and Viagra. “This may
prove to be the most important and priceless
investment any family may ever make.” May it,
indeed? Well, I don’t have $2 million or any staff or just
$35,000 per person plus however much they
charge for the kids — and given we’re talking
about the future survival of mankind, I’d probably
have to bring them, wouldn’t I? Most important,
the thought of spending several “semi-private”
years stuck in a Soviet version of the Northern LineCHARLIE CLIFT FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES MAGAZINE
MATT RUDD
How much to survive the apocalypse?
I’d rather take my chances, thanks
with the sort of people who would pay for this kind
of thing just isn’t that appealing. Next.
A shop near Sunderland is offering one-person
nuclear emergency survival kits for £629.95. As
well as a hazmat suit (brown, appropriately
enough), a military-grade gas mask, some windproof
matches and a “survival mirror”, the kit includes
rations to keep you going for 72 hours. “There is a fine
line between order and chaos,” the alarming blurb
reads, “and sometimes that line can be measured in
seconds.” And I wonder, for a second, whether I’d
want to spend those final seconds between order
and chaos trying to get into a brown hazmat suit
rather than, I don’t know, kissing a wife and/or
making a cup of tea. Then I wonder how I’d eat the
rations through the gas mask and what I’d do when
the 72 hours were up.
And then it said: “We are currently experiencing
a drastic surge in orders and inquiries. The current
lead time for this product is estimated at 1-3 weeks.”
So I thought instead of all the customers waiting
anxiously next to the letterbox, praying the survival
kit comes before the thing they’re trying to survive.
Who are these people? Are they the same people
who spent that first lockdown stockpiling toilet
rolls? Does having a hazmat suit and a whistle in
the loft make them feel better about the state of
the world? Or do they just move on to the next
thing to worry about?
It is easy enough to laugh at the preppers —
see above — but it must be no fun for them.
Imagining worst-case scenarios and then
trying to insulate against them is no way to
live. I know because I’ve been guilty of it
myself. Lying awake at night worrying
about things that might never happen —
not zombies exactly, but unreasonable
mortgage providers, so pretty similar.
We are, for all the obvious, understandable
reasons, living through a pandemic of anxiety.
Fear is a contagion and facemasks (or military-
grade gas masks) won’t help. But if you do
find yourself thinking about spaffing more
than £600 on a survival kit or 100 times that
on a prepper hole, stop. If the apocalypse
comes, you want to be eaten first, not last.
And if it doesn’t, just think of the money
you’ve saved, you silly n
@mattrudd
Man Down: Why Men Are Unhappy and What
We Can Do About It by Matt Rudd is published
in paperback by Piatkus at £9.For a deposit of $25,000,
I could secure a lease on a bit
of bunker in South Dakota
The Sunday Times Magazine • 7