“Bug out” isn't a financial term, it originates from British army slang which means to move away from current location very quickly.
One obvious question comes to mind, what do the ultra-rich know that the rest of us don't?
The type of assets they are buying really gives a new meaning to rotating into safe haven assets.
So what’s been a popular buy for the 0.01% over the last 12 months? Apparently they’re snapping up survival properties, such as farms in far flung places and deep underground bunkers. In fact, a prominent insider at the Robert Johnson World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland says that “very powerful people are telling us they’re scared”. What was even more surprising is what he revealed about hedge fund managers who “all over the world are buying airstrips and farms in places like New Zealand”. What do these ultra-wealthy and, more often than not, ultra-connected know that is driving them to make ‘bug out’ plans, preparing ‘bug out’ locations?
When the world's elite start preparing for doomsday, it’s more than just a flashing warning light on the dashboard, it really is a very troubling sign. Type in the words billionaire's craze for building elaborate subterranean extensions into ‘google’ and you'll get a list as long as your arm. If you had the financial means to live anywhere in the world would you want to live a hundred meters below ground? Unless you were preparing for a disaster and right now the elite appear to be quietly preparing for a disaster like never before.
It seems that the folks with the means are also noticing the growing inequality and how wealth is being skewed to the very top. They are mindful of the civil unrest from Ferguson and the Occupy protests and it appears they are preparing for the consequences. At a packed session in Davos, Robert Johnson revealed that worried hedge fund managers were already planning their escapes. “I know hedge fund managers all over the world who are buying airstrips and farms in places like New Zealand because they think they need a getaway”, he said.
In a separate interview, Johnson admitted that “very powerful people are telling us they’re scared” and that the elite “see increasing evidence of social instability and violence”.
This prominent Davos insider is not the only saying that the elites are planning to bug out.
His comments were backed up by Stewart Wallis, executive director of the New Economics Foundation, who when asked about the comments told CNBC Africa: “Getaway cars, the airstrips in New Zealand and all that sort of thing, so basically a way to get off. If they can get off, onto another planet, some of them would.”
I guess Virgin Galatic have done their market research, knowing there would be demand from people with heavy wallets queuing up to be blasted into space to get away from it all.
But while some of the elites would be happy to find another planet to bug out, others prefer to dig in very deep when it hits the proverbial fan.
For example, there is an underground decommissioned missile silo in Kansas that has been transformed into luxury survival condos by a real estate developer. The following is from the Wall Street Journal article about those condos.
“The so-called Survival Condo complex boasts full and half-floor units that cost $1.5 million to $3 million each. The building can accommodate up to 75 people, and buyers include doctors, scientists and entrepreneurs, says developer Larry Hall.”
It sounds like they are creating an exclusive ecosystem hundreds of feet underground.
Mr. Hall, who lives in a Denver suburb, bought his first missile-silo site in Kansas in 2008 and completed construction in December 2012. A year later, he says, the development had sold out. Work on the second security compound—the one where Mr. Allen bought a unit—is under way, and Mr. Hall says he is considering additional sites in Texas and elsewhere.
As former nuclear missile sites, built under the supervision of the Army Corps of Engineers, the structures were originally designed to withstand a direct hit by a nuclear bomb. At ground level, they can be sealed up by two armoured doors weighing 16,000 pounds each. Mr. Hall added sophisticated water and air-treatment facilities, state-of-the-art computer network technology and several alternate power generation capabilities. Other wealthy individuals are turning their current homes into high tech security fortresses.
Those involved in home security and providing futuristic gadgets, costly bunkers, passageways, panic rooms and recognition software are seeing business boom. .
But perhaps we are seeing ultra-rich paranoid eccentrics with so much money that they don't know what to do with it and are going loopy, or do they really know that something big is around the corner?
Who knows, human behaviour is very odd, meanwhile the doomsday businesses are cashing in on the doom trend.
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