These Rich and Famous Preppers Are Coming Out of the Bunker. Do They Know Something We Don’t?

By the author of Be Ready for Anything and the online course Bloom Where You’re Planted

Prepping just doesn’t seem as “crazy” as it used to. It appears that prepping isn’t just for doomsday-fearing, tinfoil hat types anymore. Lots of people have woken up to the fact that the worst can happen, and they’re getting ready for it.

Even, it so happens, rich and famous folks.

Whether they’re worried about a giant asteroid hitting the earth, the breakdown of society, the “big” earthquake, or nuclear war, they have one thing in common – they intend to be ready and to protect the people they love. If these rich and famous folks are publicly doing something as “crazy” as getting prepped, I think we should all pay attention. It’s entirely possible that they know something we don’t.

Who are these famous preppers?

Recently, quite a few people have come out of the bunker.

Ronda Rousey, former UFC champion and current professional wrestler, has confessed that she and her husband, Travis Browne, are into prepping and self-reliance. They live on a rural property. “largely independent of modern conveniences.” Here’s what she has to say about it:

“I am a big doomsday prepper. I think of it as a very positive outlook on the world. Some people think it is negative… Instead of my apocalypse plan being a handle of alcohol and maybe tears, which is a lot of people’s plan, I’m like, I’m going to make it. If anyone’s going to make it, I’m going to make it…

…I could buy a whole bunch of things, but what’s luxury to me and freedom to me is being independent and finding a way to live off the land and do no harm, as opposed to buying as many mansions as I can and being on Cribs…

…I think that self-reliance and independence is real freedom. We forgo our freedom for convenience a lot of the time. It is more important for people to know how to feed themselves than to know how to do trigonometry,” she added. “A lot of these skills that were commonplace, every generation we know less and less an less about them because it makes people money for us not to know. Every single person in here their survival plan is a grocery store. If all the grocery stores closed, what would you do? That’s a scary thought.” (source)

And Rousey isn’t alone in her plans to survive. Jamie Lee Curtis, a Red Cross volunteer, has made a video of what she keeps in her survival kit to encourage others to get prepped. Zooey Deschanel of New Girl went on the Conan O’Brien show and talked about being prepared.

Lots of things in Roseanne Barr’s Twitter feed indicate she’s prepared too. Here are some examples cited by the Washington Times:

• “in america: be prepared by organizing w ur neighbors to grow wholesome food/store water/vitamins/guns.”
• “I tell people to have cash, guns, food, water, meds, etc. Foolish if you don’t have cash.”
• “grandmothers: organize your teen youth to protect the young ones and the old ones and grow community gardens if u want 2 survive things.”

Billionaires who have bunkers and retreats

Alex Hollings of Sofrep reports that some people you’d never expect to have a bunker were prepped and ready for whatever might come.

• The Walton family: The owners of Wal-Mart have a custom-built bunker in Bentonville, Arkansas that is big enough for their extremely large family. They built it shortly after the 9/11 attacks and it is guarded by a full-time security detail.
• Antonio García Martínez: The former Facebook product manager purchased land in the Pacific Northwest. While he hasn’t provided a lot of details (good OpSec, sir), he has said that  “it is well equipped with solar and diesel generators, survival equipment, and all the firepower he believes he’d need to defend his stake.”
• Steve Huffman: The co-founder of Reddit has undergone Lasix surgery to correct his vision because, in his own words, without glasses or contacts, if the world ends, he’s “f–ked.” Huffman also has a bunker and motorcycles to evacuate San Francisco. He said, ” I think, to some degree, we all collectively take it on faith that our country works, that our currency is valuable, the peaceful transfer of power — that all of these things that we hold dear work because we believe they work. While I do believe they’re quite resilient, and we’ve been through a lot, certainly we’re going to go through a lot more.”

Other rich preppers are buying up huge swaths of land all over the world

And other extremely wealthy folks have plans in place, too.  Quite a few Silicon Valley billionaires have purchased property in rural New Zealand to which they plan to escape if it all goes belly-up. According to Mark O’Connell of the Guardian, two, in particular, are making waves.

• Peter Thiel: The co-founder of Paypal and billionaire venture capitalist has purchased a 477-acre plot of property in New Zealand and fast-tracked his citizenship there.
• Sam Altman: Another Silicone Valley entrepreneur plans to head to N.Z. with Thiel if it all goes belly up. He has told the press that he has an arrangement with Thiel ” whereby in the eventuality of some kind of systemic collapse scenario – synthetic virus breakout, rampaging AI, resource war between nuclear-armed states, so forth – they both get on a private jet and fly to a property Thiel owns in New Zealand.”

Other billionaires are buying up huge swaths of property here in the US. According to Forbes, these guys are creating massive, remote “vacation home” retreats with private jets standing by to get them there.

• John Malone: 2,200,000 acres in Wyoming and Colorado
• Ted Turner: 2,000,000 acres in Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico and North Dakota
• Philip Anschultz: 434,000 acres in Wyoming
• Jeff Bezos: 400,000 acres in Texas
• Stan Kroenke: 225,162 acres in Montana
• Bill Gates: 28,000 acres in Arizona, in which he is creating his own town called Belmont

Does this mean the “end” is near?

I don’t know about you, but I always figure that the billionaire set is “important” enough to be provided with information to which the rest of us do not have access. While I’m not saying that the sky is falling, an asteroid is headed our way, or the complete breakdown of society is upon us, I am saying that when a flurry of preparations of folks who are probably in the know becomes public knowledge, we should all be paying close attention and working on our own survival plans.

Do you know of any other celebrity or ultra-wealthy preppers? Share in the comments, along with links.