hey, good evening. thanks for joining us. i'm anderson cooper. a new series of all new cnn film shorts, do you meanry short films that spotlight people stlooifg to build communities across america. first off we visit a community of dooms day preppers and uprooted their family to live off the grid. and seeking and finding hundreds

of ships and lives lost at see during the trans-atlantic slave trade. stay with us. it begins right now only on cnn. who knows what's really going to happen? >> i don't think that you're going to wake up the next morning and there's going to be chaos. it's going to be a gradual thing where you say holy crap. look at what this world is doing. i'm out here in the middle of nowhere trying to avoid it. if worse comes to worse, i'll lock us in this bunker. we're in a steel bunker with rebar, reinforced, which it was designed for blast.

i do this every morning every day. >> the remoteness of the location is both a pro and a con. >> uh-huh. >> it is so quiet and peaceful and the sky is so wonderful, the prairie and the hills are just so wonderful. >> and the flowers. >> and -- yeah. it's just a great place to live. but it's not convenient to live

here at all. so we've got one of ours is in high school and we home school her. we had to get the satellite set up. the satellite goes down if the power's not up and i have to make sure the power's up all the time. water has to be piped in from a well. i've got to have containers of water. we've got cattle on the property, so when we're driving, drive cautiously. out here, i'm cold, i'm cold, dad, and it's 60 degrees in here. well, i don't have a switch to turn on the heat and they can adjust it to 75 for you, kiddo. i've got to start a five, it's got to circulate. it's going to take about an hour, by then you'll be up. put on some clothes and get up. helping people build their stuff. i had more going on here than i ever did in the city but it was

so much different. i would walk outside and it was peaceful. there was no honking, nobody yelling. no letter from the homeowners association. we have a report of you carrying firearms. no. i was loading them in my car when i start my harley up, i'm bothering the neighbors. here i can do that. not a problem. and it brought my level down of intensity so quickly. you feel like the weight of the world, the bricks you carry, eventually they'll wear you down. i felt the bricks go one after the other, one after the other, one after the other. >> i consider myself to be kind of normal and just a die that pays attention to what's going on and what options are. i consider it no more than a really well stocked pantry. we know the discord here in america that gave us reason to

begin thinking more about well, do we have enough. if something really went down as far as some real social unrest. the original plan was to have a house with a fortified basement and we'd stay in place. they'd burn the house down on top of us, and it won't matter. that's the lone wolf scenario. there's a set of negatives and draw barks but it was all we had. we recognized the community was a good thing but we didn't have any idea how to create that community ourselves from scratch or any place to do it. it was during the bunker research that i came across vivos. that's pretty cool. i like military stuff. i'm a technical guy. bunkers are cool. you stood up all the numbers, it's a required financing joochl we're not taking any money out of our 401 k.

>> that gives me the financial liberty to consider to be able to retire. otherwise, i was going to be chained to a house payment till i die. i've come out and met the people and realized, yes, this is going to work. >> we came out here in march of 2020 after the pandemic started. >> and have to go the opposite anymore, so what's keeping us here. >> we're growing exactly what we want. the goal is to make it a house. the only difference will be the ceiling's curved and i don't notice windows. so throughout 2200 square feet in here. now we built a loft up on top which the grandkids can have a

field day. we haven't put the railings up. but there's 750 square feet up on top. so over 3,000 square feet. and all of our lights are kind of bunkerish. but this here is a two foot by two foot light. >> so we have four of these. one's going over the stove. one will go over the kitchen sink. we'll have a frame built with shutters that we can open and close. we saw this in minard's in rapid city, a kitchen display. we got to have one of those. >> we'll put different pictures, like a mount rushmore or a lake or whatever we want. if we want to see outside, quote unquote, we can open the shutters and see a picture.

>> one in five people say they prepare for disasters. but it's doubled since the pandemic. >> building an underground bunker might not be as unusual as you think. >> sales of dooms day bunkers, fallout tents and underground shelters with soaring in the united states. the price starts at about $20,000. some of them cost as much as -- >> 17.5 million you can own a bunker. >> a dooms day prepping for the super rich has taken hold among some of the wealthiest in silicon valley to new york city. >> going to extreme measures for a sense of security. >> what you're looking at now is in the fore ground, kind of angled sideways. f walk is the first one that we set to developing and selling and building, and now we actually sold out as of four weeks ago.

so x point as we foe it now will originally called the black hills. and it was a manufacturing and storage facility for weapons, munitions, bombs, any kind of thing that was going to be used in america's involvement in world war ii. we've carved out a niche for ourselves. each bunker is $35,000. we've always wanted to keep the cost accessible for an average middle class family. once you lease your bunker, you're free to do with it as you will. if they want to go with a build-out, they can hire us and our contractors. you can have a fully build-out framed home on the inside, that would also include a generator and fuel supply. it includes a water hook-up, a

septic system. and community. we really understand that humans are so social and so vivos will never compromise on that. we always want to build communities. >> and we get up there. get up there. >> the local ranch ers, we bougt our meat from them. they invited us to church so we started to go to church. >> they're good people. >> yeah. >> there's good census among us about what's right and what's wrong. that's really important. >> i liking the fact that i do have help here, you know, i'll feed them in return for helping me. >> good and fired up.

>> i'm thankful i don't have to walk anymore and we have a goal to be able to travel soon. few years ago, we didn't think that would be possible, so -- >> i think we did the right thing. >> i think the bunker's pretty cool but it gets kind of boring in there. there's only so much you can do in there. can't open a window. but overall, i think it's pretty cool. there's a lot more space than our other house. >> let your sister finish it. ok. stand back out of the way.

there you go. good job. see you later. my boy. a young kid. we have to take care of him sometimes. this is the checkpoint perimeter checks i do when i look round and surveil. tom lives directly behind us. we've got the doc that lives right back here. he's a cardiologist. he just unloaded all his equipment for a cross fit 1yi78. we've got a barn that we just built over there. he's a chiropractor. we'll have a cardiologist and a chiropractor. you come out here, you get vetted to make sure you're stable and not have some mental issues. out here, you will be tested on your mental capabilities.

it gets lonely. it gets scary at night sometimes living with the animals. we don't want no militia crazy nut jobs out here that are running around trying to shoot things up. that's not what we're about. it's really important that these preppers understand that. everybody's not out to get you. just because you prep doesn't mean people are going to come in and steady all your stuff if something goes wrong. got to help people. >> i can't wait to take this off. >> there's a part of your brain that if you go buy some freeze dried food that you can put on a shelf for 20 years until you need it, that feels a little crazy. when you do something that doesn't have an immediate benefit, we are wired to think that that's a little bit crazy. >> i hope i never have to eat this stuff. >> you don't like it?

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the crazy dooms day prepper, the ted kuczynski type. it's not true. people have seen worsening pat herbs because of climate change.

people can look at what's happening with politics and civil discourse in this country. they see how our government failed to handle covid. they see how our government has failed to handle climate change. so enough time has gone by where people see the problems and they see that they can't rely on others to fix those problems or to save them from those problems, so that has led more people to realize that i am my first responder and it is on me to not be a victim. the modern prepper community is ready for emergencies. i was really frustrated with the preparedness market, and i'm john. one of your instructors. i've taught millions of people around the world how to be a sane, modern prepper. prepared.com teaches people how

to get ready for emergencies. like car accidents, losing your job suddenly and not knowing how you're going to feed your family, all the way up through major things like natural disasters, pandemics, or worse. we started the website because we could see that there were a lot of people out there that felt the same way that we did, and it's been beyond those expectations. if we spend time and money on having insurance in case our house burns down, shouldn't we also spend time and money to help our kids survive the fire in the first place? >> so remember, you start with the base on that side. other side. like this. put it under here. good. >> we're here today filming a medical course. >> twist. try to wrap this around three times. >> we're filming this course at our editor john stokes' house and his daughters are practicing the skills with us.

>> what we call prepping is what our grandparents called normal life. my grandparents canned food. they changed their own i'm. they knew how to take care of basic first aid issues instead of going and having a massive hospital bill. they know how to navigate without gps. the grandparents have been buying a lot of courses for their kids or their grandkids. so i did the kind of cliche nerdy software engineer, raise venture capital, that whole thing. then i was recruited by the biden administration. my role was essentially how do

we make the machine of government better at solving problems. i co-founded the against innovation unit at the pentagon. they wanted to bring many in people to figure out how to fix government. now i run a prepper website. that should tell you something. when i was a kid the perception was that government had amazing technology. right. like if we had a sony walkman, imagine what the government has. now it's the opposite. the government up until very recently was running nuclear codes on floppy discs. just a few years ago, the administer of fema publicly said very directly, you should not depend on us. i never thought i would be sitting here. i never thought i'd have a family and have to raise them out here. that's a whole 'nother ball game. when covid hit, though shut our

business down. then the riots started. and i was done with it. my training through the military has taught me that there is a dark side to everybody. and when i go to that dark side, i'm a different person, and i don't atlantic that person. it's not a good person. i had to remove myself from the situation or it would have gotten ugly quick, so that's why we came out here. this way, out here, i can protect them. if worse comes to worse i'll lock us in this bunker and you ain't getting in. >> 59 years, i lived in georgia and tom, 70. all our lives. yeah. so it was a switch. yeah. i miss my sisters, the twins and my great nieces. i'm used to seeing them at least once a month.

and they change every time you see them, they're changed, you know. tom works on eastern time, so he gets up at 4:30. goes to work at 5:00. i cook. i cross-stitch. make homemade pot holders from a loom. he's on conference calls and we just have this room right now so we have to be quiet. >> it's just a safe room. this idea of having a space that's yours where you can see who's coming and who's going, that is just a primal sense of comfort in a world that is legitimately scary, having that refuge is a huge deal. but there's hundreds of other steps you should do before you even think about a bunker.

>> when people ask me, do you think doomsday is going to happen? no. i think things are going to get a lot worse before they get a lot better. what does that mean? 20% of children go hungry at least for some portion every year. more than half of americans live paycheck to paycheck. 37% of americans can't handle an unexpected $400 emergency without going into debt. >> i'm worried for the rest of the society but one of the things that concern you. >> but those things do concern me and inform my decisions. i'm never going to have fm hardship. but if i live in an economy that can't sustain itself, it doesn't

matter how much money i have in the bank. can you come up -- this is another way i can help people and it was a needed way. what's selfish is to not prepare, and so i've done what i can to effect myself. i have an off-grid property that is very roussel. we have backup generators and thousands of gallons of fuel stored so that when covid struck i could completely isolate myself from other people. i'm a pretty advanced prepper, so i'm at the point where i'm now increasing the amount of time that i know i can survive. is like instead of having two weeks of supplies, you might have months or years worth of supplies. you start to get more community oriented, building up your community, building up your tribe. >> hey. hey. evelyn. do you want to go in and get some of those little white

chairs out for you guys? >> no, i don't, but i will. >> ok. thank you. >> the more community you have, the more you can rely on other people, the better the outcome will be. so after having some conversations with him, i realized, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, he's like a for-real prepper. >> you don't meet your neighbor, hi, nice to meet you, are you a prepper? you feel each other out. >> when did you decide you were a prepper? >> that's an interesting story. i have had just become a new dad and we had a big disaster like with the banking system, and i got a glimpse into how fragile things are. i thought, well, you know, i should prepare my family in case something bad happenings. also, we were in san francisco and the big one is going to hit there one day, so we needed food and we needed water for an

earthquake. i like gear, so i like the gear. >> you like the knives and the guns. >> it's a good question. really good question. >> our little buddy. >> change is hard. change typically comes from the edges, right, from the weirdos, the misfits, the people who are willing to say i know that i'm different from what's normal now. i see a problem and i think i see a solution. what do you think? you don't find those things inside the box. you find those things outside the box. >> are you eight? >> i'm nine. >> 2013. >> not eight. >> no. you're going to be.

>> on a bad day like when the -- >> oh, yes. my god, yes. sometimes i don't get much and i'll drive up to the top of one of the hills and i have to sit there and clear my head. yast year upper driving a brand-new corvette and now you're update because the electrical keeps tripping on you and kids are yelling at you and you're tired and working all day and slinging that ax. it's like what are you doing, dude? is it worth it? and i'm hoping that it is all going to be worth it in the end. >> what does that mean? >> more people. i didn't move out here to be alone. i'm not the type of person that needs to be away from people. i love people. the more people, the better. but respectful people that respect me and my property and

my lifestyle and we can live in peace and enjoy each other. gatherings and a little more social interaction. just sold a bunker to a young couple from new orleans. she's pregnant. they're the youngest couple out here now. i'm sure i'll be helping them with the build-out. we all do a little bit of everything out here. always help each other. that's what it's about for me. >> we enjoyed it. >> thank you. >> thank you, katy. >> we can build a community. something to grow on and people want to come out here. we can build this place together. >> i started diving to connect to my path. >> finding vessels. >> the materiality of that ship of enslaved africans can't be

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