I have posted before about these ‘tactical timeshares’…the notion that you write a check and ‘reserve your room’ at some grandly appointed ‘safe location’. Perhaps they can be made to work, but I think it’s just a case of “if he didnt want them fleeced, he wouldn’t have made them sheep.”
I’m too tired to rewrite my own words, so I’m just gonna crib them right from the post:
Here’s something to think about – if you’re going to be a member of a ‘survival group’ or organization, membership should be based on something other than money – race, religion, political leaning, ethnicity, familial relation, shared history, etc, etc. If the only membership requirement to get in is to write a check, then in my opinion you are making a mistake.
Whether you know it or not, you’re probably already part of a very informal survival group. You, your spouse, your neighbor who you go shooting with, the guy at work you share books about prepping with, the brother in law who splits a beef with you once a year….shutdown the power grid, roll those people together, and you’ve pretty much got your own ad-hoc ‘survival group’ that would probably be a lot more cohesive than a half dozen families whose only common denominator was the ability to write a check.
Should you have a fortified bunker somewhere? Sure, why not? Should it be in a compound with a hundred other bunkers, each one housing people who are total strangers to you? I don’t think so.
When the situation gets downright horrific, humans turn tribal. And tribe is founded on certain common traits…race, religion, family, etc…. that tribe will be stronger and more cohesive than one that is just ten strangers you met in an elevator.
Im sure that the people who signed up for Vivos’ tactical timeshare thought they were doing something smart. Unless I am missing something , though, I think that they would have been far better off spending that money on either hardening and fortifying their present location, or getting together with other trusted people (family, etc.) and buying a piece of dirt somewhere and building their own retreat environment.
Vivos pops up from time to time on my radar with articles about their business and the people who utilize it. I have said from the beginning that these kinds of places (and there are several others out there) just seem like projects that are doomed to collapse under their own mismanagement, infighting, lack of cohesion, and unworkability.
I’ll drop the money, buy a chink of dirt, build my retreat, and populate it with my own tribe, if they want to join me, and I think it would be more successful, long term, than these snake-oily-sounding project. How did Ignatius Piazza not get into this business?
h/t the thoughtful reader who sent me an email pointing this article out to me.
As a Military retired guy. I have been to most of the weapons depot and storage sites that are being converted into the “safe places”. I worked with the stuff stored in these locations and many closed military bases. These folks might want to get some independent chemical testing of the sites especially old missile silos. The shit stored there and the other shit we dumped and buried all over these sites has now been found to be VERY VERY bad. If we did this disposal method now, its life in prison.
As a aside, I agree with money choosing who gets a spot being ridiculous. So the people that voted for and supported the shit going on in this country will be in a bunker with you and will be calling you all sorts of bad names and demanding you being ejected from the site I bet.. I’m sure that will turnout well.
Funny as I look at these just for fun and tactical practice, how there is NO topside security. You are just in a hole or bunker. So what happens when I and a few friends show up with a welder for your blast door and bags of concrete or even spray foam for your air vents? And then knock politely on the door asking for your decision on sharing?
You make some very good points and as a former defense contractor, I can vouch for the toxic environment surrounding many of our military installations. Downwinders from one site I frequented had a cancer level off the charts, and yes, we buried many hazardous items in that vast desert.
Regarding “topside security”, I wouldn’t want to trespass anywhere near some of the better retreats. Any potential threats will be dealt with long before they become an actual threat.
I likewise spent years working on ammo depots. Chances are there was not anything especially toxic stored in those igloos (I don’t think Black Hills AD ever stored nuclear or chemical weapons, for example) but there may well be unintended toxic exposures and poorly recorded ones. One site I worked had several igloos that had been used to store leaking industrial flasks of mercury, for example. They were leaking due to a roof collapse in a warehouse decades prior, which caused such gross contamination that the concrete pads of the warehouse still had visible mercury many years later.
I can see renting an ammo igloo as a storage structure. It’s quite secure, dry, usually cool even in summer… But as a home? Beyond stupid. A single non-defensible entrance, easy access to the ventilation system (jug of concrete cleaner and bag of pool-shock anyone?), no easy way to add water or sewerage, or sufficient ventilation to use a fireplace, gas burner, etc.
Well we now now what’s going on I commented about how many were hitting the market back July this year.
“I have noticed there are a lot of Bunkers at Vivos xPoint, located near the Black Hills area of South Dakota, just south of the city of Edgemont have hit the market the last few weeks and they look like they are from many different sellers some for a lot less them the old Vivos price, I have no idea what is going on and don’t care that much but something is.”
“Looking at the number that have hit the market these two past weeks, it looks like a lot of people have taken a long time to work out what most already knew. I’d like to find out who was first and then went and had a word with the rest.”
https://www.commanderzero.com/?p=11297
https://www.sdnewswatch.org/bunker-community-igloo-south-dakota-vivos/
https://www.sdnewswatch.org/igloo-south-dakota-prepper-bunker-vivos-xpoint/
Take the worst case HOA story you’ve every heard. Now give them guns.
The Reddit subreddit would be epic.
I bet I’m not the only one who went looking on Reddit just to make sure.
Biggest problem in a situation like this. Always dealing with idiots whose checkbooks equal the size of their egos. Not necessarily the size of their brains. Which can nearly microscopic.
General George S. Patton’s quote, “Fixed fortifications are a monument to the stupidity of man,” reflects his belief in the limitations of static defenses in warfare. Patton believed that relying on fixed fortifications, such as bunkers and walls, could lead to complacency. In his view, successful operations required flexibility and the ability to move quickly to respond to changing conditions.
Quoting Patton to promote mobility in a survival setting is a poor choice. Those who survive a massive nuclear attack, for example, are unlikely to choose a mobile caravan as a lifestyle. More likely than not, they will want to avoid warfare altogether, at least if they have any sense.
Moving across the land like a plague of locusts means that they will likely resort to plundering, rather than focusing on their own self-sufficiency. Besides the obvious problem with a steadily shrinking resource of fuel over time, only by settling into a self-sufficient lifestyle of homesteading is there any long-range prospect of survival.
As an obvious example of survival mobility, countless survival works of fiction utilize motorcycle gangs and the like as the “hunter-gatherers” of the storyline. For those who choose this locust-like route, there is the ticklish problem that many who have badly needed resources will be unlikely to give them up without a serious fight.
At that point, the mobile group has to determine just how many of them they consider to be expendable in getting to those protected resources. The concept of “acceptable losses” is important when planning military operations. So it is likely to be here.
Quoting Patton on this topic is a sign of just not grasping the essentials.
Fixed fortifications DO have a useful role: this can be seen in every FOB, artillery base, air base, etc.
Wandering about the boonies post-TEOTWAWKI isn’t a viable plan in most scenarios. It’s a ticket to starvation and disease and death due to exposure, if not being actively targeted and victimized.
Ran to the comment section just to give props for the Iggy P reference. Almost made me blast my coffee all over the keyboard.
When Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle wrote Lucifer’s Hammer in 1977, I learned that if you have a GREAT place set up, and you’re not there to keep it, you’ve got jack and squat. And Jack’s headed out of town.
And frankly, I’m not sure I’d trust most of my (extended) family members to manage it for me: They’d sell the place for a handful of magic beans.
“There’s a sucker born every minute.” – Phineas Taylor Barnum
There are some things that even Ignatius Piazza won’t do.
Heh!