Prepping for the End of the World (Full Episode) | Doomsday Preppers

These four families are preparing for a time in the not-so-distant future when they believe water, food, and fuel will be scarce when the grid goes down. This could be our food source. We have three different sources of water; without good water, you're not going to survive long. They fear a world where money is worthless and there is no rule of law. I'm not going to look like prey. Each expects an impending disaster that will destroy the world as we know it and have gone to extreme lengths so that when the end of days arrive, they will be prepared to survive.

"I want my kids to do all the fun things that kids should do, but I also want to learn practical skills. Prepping has eliminated some hobbies; I don't golf, I don't bowl. I probably have about six or seven thousand dollars in food."

Our experts will assess their extensive preparations and decide if they are truly ready for the ultimate life-or-death test or if they're just flirting with disaster. Cheers to the end of the world! [Music]

Dennis and Danielle McClung live in a suburb of Phoenix with their two children. He is a web designer, and she is a nurse. Art, and they are a typical middle-class family.

"Except go. I'm preparing for a coronal mass ejection in 2012. Prepping guides everything we do. Prepping has definitely changed our life. You could say I'm obsessed with studying and preparing for the end of the world. In 2012, Earth will be bombarded by coronal mass ejection. This bombardment will knock our neighborhood and the world's electrical grid down. We'll have a couple days' worth of water, about a week's worth of food, and in 30 days our neighborhoods can be pure pandemonium."

Coronal mass ejections are powerful eruptions on the sun that break free of the solar atmosphere. If these masses of plasma reach the Earth, it could destroy our electrical grid, which touches every facet of modern life. [Music]

"We consider ourselves suburban preppers. We happen to live in a desert city, so we have a lot of challenges that most folks don't have. As preppers, the doomsday scenario for 2012 for me would be that it got so chaotic outside that we would have to leave our home and not be able to take care of our family."

"Let's say our family's sitting here in our home some night in 2012 and the coronal mass ejection hits. The first thing that we'll notice is all the lights go off. That's really the least of our worries because we only have a couple days' worth of water, and after that, the next thing to run out would be food. Then probably about seven days after the coronal mass ejection hits, we have no more modern health care. After that, things get real hairy. We could potentially have 140 nuclear meltdowns in America."

In 2009, Dennis moved his family from a small apartment to his suburban dream home—a bedroom for each kid, a modern kitchen, and an Arizona necessity: a backyard pool.

"But not for swimming! Our home came with a large empty rundown pool, and what we did is we framed it and converted it into a solar-powered aquaponic greenhouse as part of our plan to be as self-sufficient as we can by 2012."

"Yeah. Oh, sorry."

"That's okay."

"All right, we keep our chickens over our pond, and they give us eggs every day. The chicken waste drops into the pond and feeds the pond plants and the algae, which in return feeds the fish. We eat the fish every day, and the water from the fish in returns provides nutrients for the plants. So basically, we've converted our pool into a self-sufficient urban greenhouse in preparation for a coronal mass ejection in 2012."

"Originally, our old pool was a 16 by 30 rectangle that was nine and a half feet deep and about four and a half feet at the shallow end, so it's about 500 square feet. In this 500 square feet, we're able to grow thousands of tilapia fish. The amazing thing about the tilapia is they can have 1,200 babies at a time, and they're ready to reproduce four to six weeks later, so they can grow exponentially."

"Dad, can we go fishing?"

"Sure! Let's go! Let's get the pool! I'll race you! Come on! You got it! Come on, Kaden, you got it! Pull it! Reel it in!"

"Wow, that's a big one!"

If the food supply is disrupted in 2012 or 2013, Dennis will have his own self-sustaining food source. But until then, with over a thousand fish in the deep end of his pool, he has to go fishing every day because his family eats tilapia nearly every single night.

"We could make tilapia lasagna, tilapia tacos, tilapia stir-fry. It's nice because it takes on the taste of whatever we're cooking with. We've been eating fish pretty much daily, and we haven't got tired of it yet."

The tilapia water is carried up with a pump using minimal electricity that's powered by solar panels, and then it's distributed with gravity to the plants.

"Basically, what we do is we grow fish, and we use that nutrient-rich water to also grow produce. We have bok choy, we have grapes, blackberries, peppers, carrots, broccoli. We're trying to live self-sustainable enough to survive an apocalypse."

The heart of Dennis's food production system is the minuscule miracle plant called duckweed. It not only purifies their water, but since it has as much protein as soy, they feed it to the fish, their livestock, and are exploring ways that as a last resort they can eat it themselves.

"You know this stuff's getting so thick, we have so much of it, we should make a protein shake out of it."

"That's a good idea. Just dry it out."

"Yeah, what I mean here? Ready? Tastes like lettuce."

"Tastes like lettuce."

In the event that a coronal mass ejection does strike, kitchen appliances powered by electricity will be useless. Danielle uses the sun oven for everything from baking bread to making sun-dried tomatoes and even to dehydrate duckweed for a protein shake. [Music]

"We have eight hens that we raise in our pool. The city will allow us to attend, and we only have eight, so we try to stay under the radar."

Kaden takes personal pride in being responsible for the chickens.

"He feeds and waters the chickens; he also collects the eggs. Usually, we get about five to eight eggs a day."

"Three brown right now."

"Good boy!"

The McClung backyard menagerie is not limited to just fish and fowl; they also keep some unusual but practical pets so that even without electricity to run their refrigerator, they will still have fresh milk daily.

"We have two West African pygmy goats, and they provide our family with a half a gallon of milk a day."

"Milk, milk, milk! Those are her udders."

"My son Kaden actually named the girl Honey, and our daughter named the boy Schatzy because if we name our goats, then they're not considered livestock."

"Like game of elk?"

"Yes, and the city we live in doesn't allow goats unless you have 35,000 square feet of land, which we don't have. So by letting our kids name the goats, we've actually got to keep them."

Dennis is constantly looking to the future, thinking and planning how we can best augment his already extensive food, water, and energy preparations for, as he calls it, the end of the world as we know it.

"This is our next big project. What we're basically going to do is rip off all the shingles you see here and coat it with a thin layer of rubberized asphalt and aluminum. What that'll do is actually reflect a lot of the heat back, save us energy, and it'll also enable us to catch thousands of gallons of rainwater which will replace our potable water usage. This is a very big project for us because in 2012, when the coronal mass ejection hits, we'll be the only folks on the block with a way to provide our family with water and electricity as well as food."

"I enjoy doing stuff like golf, but since I've been a prepper, I really haven't had much time. So I do miss a little bit of what I call normal life, but I feel it's my duty as a parent to be able to provide for my kids no matter what happens."

"The worst-case scenario that we can see is the breakdown of the fabric that holds our society together. I could see things getting really bad—people shooting each other, riots, looting, pure anarchy. So in order to get through this, we have to think a little different than most preppers because we're thinking about providing for ourselves as long as possible, being truly self-sufficient."

Cheers to the end of the world!

To survive 2012 and 2013, Dennis and Danielle have created a veritable Eden in their backyard, but how will they survive if unforeseen events force them to leave and go it alone on the road?

"All right, who's this elephant? We're no longer safe to stay here, and what will our expert think of their chances of survival?"

"I'm a typical Phoenix suburban housewife, except I'm preparing for the end of the world."

"Look what we got!"

Dennis and Danielle are scared that if the grid shuts down because of coronal mass ejections, the nearby nuclear power plant's safety measures will fail and it will melt down. In preparing for the end of the world, as with anything else, practice makes perfect, so they practice, practice, practice.

"Go!" [Music]

Dennis's goal is to have them get their nuclear, chemical, and biological suits on in under six minutes.

"Really, a family has to know how to use these, and if you don't have them in the event of a nuclear catastrophe, you'd be out of luck."

"I'm going to beat Mama! I think the boys are going to win!"

"Kaden, all right guys, we did it! All right, yeah, Kaden, you did a great job! I'm very proud of you!"

When relatives come to visit the McClungs, they sleep in what could be the safest guest bedroom in all of Arizona.

"We decided to convert our guest bedrooms to a survival supply room. We've had a lot of friends and neighbors come over and think everything is pretty normal until they walk into this room, and it kind of takes them back a bit."

"We keep our gas masks in order; this one is my daughter Veda's, this is my son Kaden's, this is my gas mask, and this is my husband Dennis's. This is our emergency coagulant; if I was to get shot, my wife could pour that on me, or someone could pour it on me and prevent me from losing all my blood. This is a minor surgery kit, so if I need to do any sutures or any minor surgeries, I have that ability. What we have here is a portable toilet, so if we had to go to the bathroom in here we could bag it up and keep it separate. Believe it or not, poor hygiene could be one of the biggest killers if something was to be wrong with the grid."

Some families go camping for a little R&R, but in an emergency, Dennis feels he will have to get his family out of the house and out of Phoenix as quickly and as well prepared as possible.

"There's no space for hot dogs and marshmallows in Dennis's bug-out bag."

"A 72-hour kit, or a bug-out bag, is basically everything you would need for about three days. You got to think about cooking and fuel and navigation, water certainly, hygiene—you're going to want to have personal means of protection. The 72-hour kit could be the difference between life and death." [Music]

"To us, preparing is a family affair. What we do is we get our kids used to prepping with us. We'll take them backpacking; we'll actually pack out the bug-out bags. My son has his favorite survival whistle, and we get used to it that way the kids aren't scared."

"Got to get the bottom of her face in first, honey."

"When disaster strikes, that's when panic strikes, and that's when you don't clearly think. But if you're used to doing something, if it's second nature, then your mind will be a little bit clearer when you need it the most."

"We're very upfront with our children. We try to let our children get the skills that we have and pass that along without scaring them or alarming them."

"You want to carry this one?"

"Yeah."

"Okay, good girl. Come on, let's go, guys!"

"Some of the other things we do is we pack up our bug-out bags, and we head out, and we try to stay in the wilderness for days just to see if we have what it takes to really survive."

"We don't think that we're a doom-and-gloom family; we don't think that we live in fear. What we have done is prepared ourselves for the events in 2012 and 2013. However, we don't let that be an overlying factor in our lives."

"Dennis, as you predicted, a coronal mass ejection hits the Earth in 2012 or 2013. Your food and water preparations were boldly planned and ingeniously and effectively executed. You have wisely provided yourself with the ability to fend off minor threats, medical supplies, and proper sanitation. However, by not integrating your neighbors into your plan, your food supplies might make you a valuable target. Our expert advises you to include your neighbors in your planning and help them develop their own to increase your chances of survival."

"Well, I don't really agree with that. We have a lot of support from our neighbors. There's a lot of people who would come to us expecting us to help, and what our position would be to do is because we know what they should be doing is direct their energies because we need to work together as a community and get through 2012."

Although Dennis disagrees with the assessment, he has subsequently met with more neighbors, inviting them over for tours of his pool and teaching them prepper strategies.

Lisa Bedford and her family live in the suburbs of Phoenix, but she's not a typical suburban soccer mom carpooling her kids to games.

"We have no other interest or purpose in life other than preparing for some Armageddon."

She is busy prepping her family for the end of the world.

"I want my kids to do all the fun things that kids should do, but I also want them to learn practical skills."

"But has she done enough?"

"I don't know how I'm going to eat this when the world ends."

Lisa Bedford and her husband have a daughter, son, cat, and dog. They are a typical suburban Phoenix family, except, "I'm afraid our country faces serious hyperinflation."

"They are preppers."

"I think to a non-prepper, what we do would seem like an obsession, but I'm not obsessed by anything. I'm just prepping for collapse of the economy, bringing on hyperinflation and higher prices."

"Our family started prepping close to three years ago. We began to see friends lose jobs, the price of gasoline going up, the price of electricity going up, the very basics that we need to survive—those prices just skyrocketing. And we realized that there really could be something very significant and very serious coming to end the days of a very prosperous America. So we took that gut feeling, and we began to just act on it, and we first started out just by going to the grocery store and buying everyday groceries."

"Okay, I think we're good on tomato soup and chicken noodle soup. I began to do research and that's when I realized I needed to stock up on basics like wheat and rice. Add that to my food storage now. Don't overflow it. We've used soda bottles for a long time; FEMA gives their official approval for this kind of plastic for food storage."

"I don't know how I'm gonna eat this when the world ends."

"The world's not going to end!"

"You act like it!"

"No, it's not going to end."

"We involve our kids in what we do simply by not having it be anything abnormal or out of the ordinary. If I ever yell, 'Get your bug-out bags, kids!' you'll know what to do."

"People call me a suburban prepper, but I really prefer to think of myself as just your typical suburban mom who has an eye on the future, and I like to think that I can prepare for the future just a little bit every day."

The prepper movement is growing exponentially. Stores that once only sold to restaurants are now welcoming individuals who are trying to stock up.

"Today, Lisa shops at Honeyville Farms, a store that caters specifically to her slightly extreme freeze-dried, dehydrated, and bulk needs."

"How many people are in your family?"

"Okay, four."

"Four? Two kids?"

"Initially, we started selling to bakeries, tortillas, restaurants, and in the last few years we've tried to target the customer who's the prepper."

"So you've got four months on hand?"

"I do."

"Good! And what's your goal? How long are you wanting to do?"

"You know, probably the big long-term goal would be a year."

"The people who are looking for bulk items and freeze-dried fruits, vegetables—the freeze-dried meats, things like that will last a long time. We're talking about 10 to 15 years on most of this stuff, and you can freeze-dry almost anything."

"There's a lot more people who are very urgent about getting to that stage of preparation because they feel like something's coming. Probably the craziest order I've seen is a single man who wanted an entire truckload of wheat, so that's 45,000 pounds of wheat just to store for himself."

"So a pallet about this size would be able to feed a family of four for a year, and that's about 1,200 calories, so that's not very much. So with two of those, that'd be closer to what your family would need."

"Okay, that's what I want."

Many preppers believe that four to six months of extra food and water are the basic provisions necessary to survive a major disaster. But for some, finding alternative currency options is just as important.

"I've covered my bases for a lot of standard scenarios, but really the biggest disaster is hyperinflation, and so what we have done is just invest in precious metals—physical silver and gold. We've heard that buying junk silver is maybe a good hedge against inflation. Ninety percent silver—that would be U.S. coinage dated in 1964 and earlier. They have fifty percent silver; it is one of the cheapest ways to buy silver today with silver at a little over thirty dollars an ounce, one of these guys here would run you about five dollars and thirty cents a piece, roughly."

"This here, you know, three thousand bucks worth of silver or you can have this whole—these bags, and you can trade in one or two or three at a time. So this bag has 400 quarters in it—it's a hundred dollars face value—and at today's market price, that would put it right around twenty-one fifty. That bag is one fifty."

"I'm a firm believer that the value of the dollar is headed down."

"Yeah, and if that's the case, then this stuff's a no-brainer."

"Yeah, yeah! So look at that, here's twenty, there's four quarters."

The suburban moms don't want to think of a time when their safe and secure neighborhood might not be so safe and secure, but in a time of hyperinflation, desperate people, large numbers of people out of work, and prices just skyrocketing beyond what anyone can afford, even the safest neighborhoods may not be so safe anymore.

"We take the kids out shooting maybe once a month, sometimes twice a month if the weather's nice."

"Okay, so hold that just like Daddy showed you."

"Okay, you got it right in the middle. Very nice! Very good!"

"Currently, we feel safe in our neighborhood."

"Point it down that way."

"But there is a concern if our currency should collapse—if there would be hyperinflation—we might see an increase in home invasions, we might see an increase in violent crimes just as people when they're desperate."

"I want my kids to do all the fun things that kids should do, but I also want them to learn practical skills. If everything hits the fan, they're going to be ready with these shooting skills for either hunting or to use defense."

"Self-defense training is crucial, but in a world gone mad, preppers believe that those who remain hidden and are not perceived as resource-rich targets will be the ones to survive."

"That sometimes might mean getting food delivered at night."

"OpSec stands for operational security. It's a military term, and it just means keeping your lips zipped. Loose lips sink ships. For us, we really don't talk a whole lot about what we do. I don't want my household and my family to be in the middle of someone else's bull's-eye as they wonder where they're going to get their next meal and realize, 'Oh, the Bedfords have it!'"

"The truth is we are more like the typical average family than not."

"Lisa, our expert feels that you have stored enough food to withstand the destabilizing and debilitating effects of hyperinflation for an initial four to six month period and are aggressively working to extend that to a full year. Most importantly, you've begun to purchase precious metals as a hedge against the unchecked inflation you fear. But while focusing on hyperinflation, you have not totally planned for other disasters and developed adequate evacuation plans, nor chosen a location to move to if your house is threatened."

"It would take a lot for us to decide to bug out. Given the constraints we have with geography and climate, we happen to live surrounded by miles and miles and miles of desert with not a whole lot of routes out of Phoenix. A hundred thousand people trying to get out of Phoenix in a summer? It would be a death trap."

Lisa has chosen to ignore our expert's advice; she feels that because Phoenix is surrounded by miles of desert and there are only three or four major exit routes, that additional evacuation plans would be fruitless.

In rural South Carolina, the Cobblers and Hunts have united their families to live, work, and fight together.

"To be able to shoot any weapon that our retreat group has is a must in the belief that we are on the precipice of worldwide economic collapse."

"They make their own food."

"Just making good gas right now so we can start the truck."

"Build their own vehicles."

"And each, if the time should come, is prepared to defend their farm to the death. Lord, you've blessed us with a beautiful day. We thank you for our friends. We thank you for the Cobblers."

"Amen."

"All right, yes," David Kobler and Scott Hunt are best friends, and their families are extremely close.

"All right, bon appétit!"

"They cook together, eat together, and prep together."

"I have prepped for a collapse of the financial system. This will cause crime to increase, hunger to increase, and a complete breakdown of law and order. It will happen here."

David is a committed prepper who lives in rural South Carolina. If the total economic meltdown he fears occurs, he and four other like-minded families plan to leave behind all their worldly possessions and link up at a farm about 20 minutes from David's house to form their own prepper community.

"I don't fear anything. I prepare. By preparing, it takes care of the fear problem."

"Scott, he is an excellent guy. You can give him a pile of junk, and he will make something useful out of it. That's why I decided to team up with him and put my life in his hand, and he has put his life in my hands."

"Hey, Dave made it!"

"Hey, Scott."

"David's expertise is in the tactical, being ex-military, having a lot of skills and training in that area."

"All right, your weapon is clear—go ahead and re-holster."

"Mine is in engineering—mine is in designing all sorts of gizmos. While in Iraq at the beginning of the invasion, I saw true hunger; I saw people fighting over my scraps, my garbage."

David believes American supermarkets could not stay stocked and people could not afford food if the economy collapsed, so he's taken just a few precautionary measures to prepare for this eventuality.

"I probably have about six or seven thousand dollars in food." [Music]

"I am probably not an overboard prepper. It has taken me about two years to get to this point of having this amount of food. I started just with canned goods that you normally buy at the grocery store—whatever you eat—and it worked out from there to now I'm stocking long-term storage food, dehydrated food. A big thing that you need to make sure you stock is toilet paper; it's used by everyone in the world. We stock a two-year supply of toilet paper!"

"More toilet paper!"

"Hey, that's a good idea!"

"Dave's food supply is over the top, but that's been a good thing because it's motivated me to catch up to him."

"My plans for food range from long-term food storage to what I've been working on for several years: growing our own food. We're able to grow everything from wheat to corn to all sorts of vegetables in anticipation of commodities prices skyrocketing. They raise cows for milk, chickens for eggs, and can slaughter either for their meat. Scott grows 1,200 pounds of wheat a year, and to make up for any shortfall of available flour, he puts his ten-year-old daughter Sarah and her much older bicycle to work."

"Okay, Mommy needs about four cups!"

"My daughter is now grinding this wheat on our bicycle wheat grinder I've built. It's a lot of work to hand grind; it's a lot easier to pedal with a bicycle. So we're grinding this today, and we're going to make bread from it tomorrow."

Of course, preppers don't live on bread alone, so with a fan, a broken refrigerator, plenty of duct tape, and some ingenuity, Scott has built a contraption to make the ultimate survival food.

"I'm looking forward to this batch: beef jerky! I take hot water from my wood boiler outside and bring water in here about 180 degrees into the heat exchanger. The fan blows across the heat exchanger, and the hot air travels into an old refrigerator. So all the hot air blows across, and then we just close it up; we allow a little bit of air to escape, and in four hours we'll be eating jerky."

"We don't do this out of fear; this is a lifestyle for us. We enjoy having a year's supply of food; it gives my children a sense of security. A human being can only stay alive for a week without water."

Scott understands that access to it is crucial for their survival.

"We have three different sources of water and five different ways to pump the water up the hill. Without good water, you're not going to survive long. We have the hydraulic ram pumps to pump water up on the hill; we have springs. Here's a solar panel that I use to pump water out of a spring, and then a drilled well that I can get drinking water out of that with a hand pump. So I know that I can get water out of the ground for my family if our economy totally collapses. Oil, gas, and electricity could become prohibitively expensive or even no longer available."

Scott and David are already preparing to make use of a once traditional but now quite unusual alternative of which they have a seemingly massive supply. [Music]

"We do just about everything we can off of wood—from cooking to heating our home, to heating our water, including driving his truck. And here I have my gasifier. The gasifier extracts the gases out of wood, and then we take the gases and run them directly into an engine. The gas comes up the right side of the engine, and then I hook it into existing carburetor, and then the wood gas carburetor mixes air in the wood gas in about a 50/50 ratio. That's pretty much it; it's pretty simple. Its processors have been around since World War II."

"It's making good gas right now, so we can start the truck."

"All right, we're running on wood; we're good to go!"

Being able to go for an afternoon joyride is nice, but if their fears materialize, this retooled 1962 Ford pickup has been customized to hook up to their generator so it can power up the entire compound. [Music]

"And this amount of wood, about three pounds of wood, works out to be about one kilowatt per hour of electricity, and with the wood I feel I have an indefinite supply in this area. Our goal here is to have enough fuel to run a year, about four hours a day, keep the freezers cold, and to run any tools, machines, welders—whatever we need to run back at the Y2K."

"They thought I was crazy, but now I don't hear that as much."

"I am definitely not crazy! I've seen a lot of things overseas, and that has motivated me and shaped my mindset today. We have 9-1-1 to call; one day we might not have 9-1-1, so it will be your responsibility to take care of your security."

In the event of a total economic collapse, Scott and David anticipate that they will come under attack from roving bands of marauders and that they will have to protect what they have built here.

"If you have no plan, you will be in serious trouble because there will be no help coming."

In rural South Carolina, Scott Hunt and David Kobler are making vast preparations to combat their greatest fear: a possible worldwide economic collapse. They've spent years and invested thousands into building their self-sufficient prepper compound; however, all could be for naught if they're unable to protect it from the attackers who did not have the foresight to prepare.

"If you don't have food, you're going to die. If you don't have firearms, someone can take all your food. So to me, you have to balance that between firearms and food."

David Kobler owns many guns and thousands of rounds of ammunition. Frequently, he runs a firearm training session that every man, woman, and child must participate in so that they are prepared for that fateful day when they are faced with the ultimate survival decision: kill or be killed.

"If you don't shoot every day, you do get rusty. This is a perishable skill that you have to work on always. I have multiple firearms; each firearm is a tool in my toolbox."

"That's it!"

"Perfect! You can go ahead and pull it back like we did to make it easier for you!"

"Feel comfortable; put—it’s gonna be a hair trigger now."

"Relax and do it when you're ready!"

"To be able to shoot any weapon that our retreat group has is a must."

"I've never shot an AR-15 before."

"I have four AR-15s, one for each family member. This weapon is important to me because it is a combat multiplier. A combat multiplier is something that makes you stronger than you actually are."

"Fear is really not even a word in my vocabulary. Fear will paralyze you and hold you in one spot. There will be a lot of people with nothing who will take what you have. I will defend to the death because this is my food for my family." [Music]

"55 acres is an almost impossible area to defend effectively. To overcome this, David has formulated a plan that creates a smaller perimeter of defense."

"We've decided to condense it at night and only watch about five or six acres. Today I'm looking for spots where we can put some more trip wires. These small devices are combat multipliers; they make us feel stronger and look stronger. This is a natural trail through the creek—if someone comes through this area, they're going to trip the device. So if it is a threat, we can deal with it."

"David's extensive combat training has taught him that in order to have the upper hand in a conflict over a larger number of attackers, he needs to see them before they see him."

"We have placed some LPO Ps in the perimeter. An LPOP is a listening post during the night and an observation post during the day, so we can see people coming. You can clearly see there's room for two guys to shoot out if necessary. This is a field phone connected to our base retreat with a wire, so it's very, very safe; no one can pick up the transmission like using a radio. We're overlooking some vital infrastructure; we're overlooking our solar panels, we're overlooking the water source of the pond, so it's key that we keep these areas under our control, and no one can mess or damage our infrastructure. So I have no doubt we could handle 10 marauders, even groups of 20."

David has spent hours and hours creating and assessing numerous contingency plans. If he or others are ever separated from the compound, he has designed a system of hidden stores that will allow them to survive and fight for days.

"This is a survival cache I put in. I appreciate if you don't get anything, but the cache—so we will not know where it is. I included a lot of things, different tools. We also have MREs along with the number 10 cans, different entrees. This will keep me and my family alive for a few weeks, no problem!"

"I absolutely never live in fear! Fear makes you go the wrong direction, but being prepared, I know if I wake up tomorrow and there's no money because the financial system has crashed, to me it'd be just another day. I'd go out, take care of the chickens, I'd go cut some firewood, and life for me would go on."

David and Scott, your worst fears have been realized: the world has been plunged into unimaginable economic chaos. Your preparations are impressive—you have developed numerous nearby sources of fresh water, stored enough food to survive initial economic shock waves, and cultivated enough land and bred enough livestock to be self-sufficient for years.

You have covered your critical needs of communication, fuel, and sanitation, and you also have a clear plan on how to maintain security and the means to execute it. However, our expert contends that your compound might be too visible and would lead outsiders to believe that you are a high-value target. You may want to explore how to better hide your complex and increase the numbers in your group.

"I definitely don't agree with the experts! Our farmhouse here definitely looks just like any other farmhouse you drive by. Anything that we do to make us stronger, be it combat multipliers are hidden, so someone walking down the street would not realize what they would be going up against."

The Koblers and the Hunts did not agree with our expert assessment and have made no additional efforts to lower their visibility as a potential target.

In the shadow of the majestic Rocky Mountains, Peter Larson has built a weekend retreat for his family.

"There are a lot of people that have cabins; my cabin just happens to be buried underground."

Living in the constant fear of a nuclear attack, he works tirelessly to safeguard his loved ones by preparing for every possible contingency.

"It doesn't mean that I'm an extremist."

"But are these extreme preparations enough?"

"Peter Larson is a traveling salesman who lives in a neatly manicured suburb of Salt Lake City with his wife, children, and grandchildren. His life is typical of millions of Americans except I've spent a better part of my life preparing for a nuclear holocaust." [Music]

"He's a prepper."

"I believe there's the very high probability of a nuclear attack on the U.S., probably from the hands of a terrorist. The greatest nightmare that I can imagine is a nuclear holocaust where a terrorist organization manages to get their hands on a delivery system that enables them to detonate the weapon over Omaha, Nebraska."

"A prepper is someone like myself who prepares, and it doesn't mean that I'm an extremist. I simply decided that it was time to get a shelter for myself and my family. There's always a question of whether or not I'll be able to actually get to my shelter. My shelter is about an hour and 20-minute drive from here. When there's a nuclear attack, the fallout would be going primarily to the east as long as the prevailing winds continue to move in that direction."

"Subsequently, I have three rounds. The rule of three guides many prepper plans."

"Peter has three modes of transportation utilizing three different routes from his home to a shelter. To practice worst-case scenarios, Peter will often leave his car and walk the last several miles to his bunker."

"One of the things about prepping is it has eliminated some hobbies; I don't golf, I don't bowl, I don't follow sports. Most of my time is focused on what can I best do to prepare my family for a nuclear holocaust."

"This is my bug-out bag; carry it with me everywhere I go. This bag has everything that I'm going to need to get myself back to my shelter: fire starting equipment, I have a hand chainsaw, water filtration—if we're dealing with a breakdown in the system, there's a hostile environment."

"It's important that I have good clean water. I'm actually pumping this water through a ceramic filter; it's kind of like pumping water through a rock, so it's going to pretty well protect me from anything that's in the water. I currently have about a thousand gallons of water stored; that'll last us about two months. By the end of the summer, I'll have another thousand gallons—adding another two months."

Peter is meticulous and relentless in his planning. Along each of his possible routes, he has hidden critical provisions.

"This one hidden on a friend's farm is only a few miles from his bunker. The idea of a cache is simply to have additional supplies located along the way between my home and my shelter so that I can resupply myself with food, water, and necessities. This is also a place I can spend the night—not only is it warm, it's also going to be dry and comfortable."

A successful salesman, Peter travels extensively. When he enters a new town or city, he is examining it through the dark prism of his survival.

"Anytime I spend time in a major metropolitan area, I'm always cognizant of the quickest way out because I look at the cities, quite frankly, as a death trap."

"My shelter is located in the foothills in a remote part of the state. This is quite a paradise, and I believe that in the event of a nuclear holocaust, this will continue to be a paradise."

"This is my bunker. I've specifically designed it and stockpiled it for my family."

"There are people, I suppose, that look at this and wonder why we would do such a thing. There are a lot of people that have cabins; my cabin just happens to be buried underground."

"This unit is a 50-foot long steel corrugated tube, 10-foot diameter. In the floor, I have enough food, medical supplies, water, clothing to last my family at least a year."

"About five years ago, I decided that it was time to get a shelter for myself and my family."

"What are we having for dinner?"

"Ramen and mac and cheese."

"We also use our shelter as a weekend retreat, and so this becomes our cabin in the woods, so to speak. It's a place that we feel good just coming to in the event of a nuclear holocaust. It's nice to have a place that you're comfortable with and has that beauty and serenity."

Peter's extreme preparations to safeguard his family from a nuclear holocaust are never complete. He's constantly adding to his food and water stockpiles, sharpening his survival skills, and spending more and more money and time to strengthen his bunker.

"When the bomb drops, I'm going to be 20 feet down in my shelter with my family. This door closed, locked in place. It's capable of withstanding the pressure of a fully loaded dump truck—80,000 pounds of pressure on this door. It'll protect me from virtually anything that can happen."

Peter is always assessing new risks, potential dangers, and possible countermeasures.

"There are still in the neighborhood of 2,000 nuclear weapons in the hands of the Russians trying to get me and check me. The Chinese are building up their nuclear stockpile; the Iranians are coming on strong, as well as the North Koreans. There are a lot of threats in this world!"

"I think you just sold the farm, my friend."

Our expert has determined that your underground shelter has been sufficiently reinforced to protect you and 12 family members from a nuclear blast as close as one-half mile from your site. You have enough food to last two years, been extensively trained in survival and self-defense skills, and your emergency evacuation plans are extremely well thought out.

"However, our expert calculates that you do not have enough water stored to ensure your survival."

"Six, six months!"

"I do need three thousand gallons of water!"

"I'll take care of that! Also, your job—with its extensive travel requirements—breaks the prepper's cardinal rule of never separating yourself from your family and leaves you in a very vulnerable situation."

"You know, he's absolutely right; that's something that I've been uncomfortable with, and quite frankly, it's time for me to change jobs."

Peter has taken our expert's advice and has begun the process of acquiring and storing additional water. Also, he is now actively looking for a new job that keeps him closer to home.

Most scientists, economists, and military leaders feel that in the immediate future, the cataclysmic events described in this show remain highly unlikely. However, currently, government officials do recommend a greater level of preparedness and awareness to cope with unanticipated events and disasters. [Music]