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Panic Room, Prepper, Survivalism. UK.
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There are a number of threats that would make you hide securely in your basement shelter.
Cyber attackers, Russia, Iran, North Korea, just learned about a Microsoft weakness. The hack that turned French supermarket freezers to cook the other day had Persian words in its code. They are constantly probing.
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In 2 years.
Russia's hybrid war with NATO. Cutting undersea cables and pipes. Cyber attacks.
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Soon after that?
AI being used for mass genocide across continents. Pandemics. Drones. Cyber attacks.
Also in development: Quantum Mechanics. Computer chips that can do in a few minutes what your laptop would take years and years to compute today.
All the world's internet traffic: Government secrets, Banking, and so on is encrypted. QM will decode everything. The end of secrecy and security.
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And if none of those get you, global warming is set to continue making more and more of the earth uninhabitable until humankind is extinct. Some think this will be complete within 250 years, meaning that many will migrate or die sooner.
And it is the fear of 4 that makes 3 very likely, because someone out there wants their people to continue. And why wait while the Earth warms up even more? Stop global warming sooner and protect your own people by killing 99% of the rest of the world's population as soon as you can be confident you will succeed.
Who could be contenders? Trump, Xi, Musk?
Trump himself will very soon be too old. But he has set his family up with $billions. Perhaps with indoctrination to create a dictatorship and wipe out large parts of the world.
Musk already plays with life and death turning his satellites off to Ukraine and Myanmar, seemingly playing with lives. Experimenting?
Xi has vowed to take back Taiwan. Why not start with an attack upon the rest of the world before Taiwan to keep the rest of the world out of the China Seas?
The choice that the world's population will unwittingly make is between
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doing nothing and the complete extinction of humankind,
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massive genocide leaving only the best-prepared.
Very obviously, a few are already preparing to survive and they won't lift a finger to prevent the demise of everyone else. Their few, and those they save to serve them, will safely continue with their pollution. Forests will grow where humans are no more and billions more trees will sort out the climate.
Who, with AI and massive manufacturing resources, will be first to think this is the solution?
It makes absolute sense to start with Europe.
Only the USA and China are making progress developing Quantum Mechanics. The winner of that race? Or the one falling behind who sees destroying the other as essential?
300 million across North America is enough for that continent.
But a large population left in North America will not grow enough food due to fertiliser and water shortages. A similar population in China (only obedient, secular communists will remain) will still need to import oil.
A world population around 750 million instead of 8.3 billion. China and USA plus a few vital suppliers.
Europe, Africa, South America and Asia outside China could have very few humans left.
A handful of families and tribes could continue untroubled, but without much modern technology, scattered throughout those areas where 99% of their peoples are gone.
Would you like to be one of them? Or extinct?
As early as 2019, academics published research we humans could be causing our own extinction. MIT News. Breaching a "carbon threshold" could lead to mass extinction.
It was reported, October 2025, that some tech billionaires began building luxury bunkers some years ago. Not always only one. If their family home is in one place, and their main workplace somewhere else, they are building two. Perhaps a third somewhere they holiday.
Read a BBC article here.
Another BBC article explains how one thing in our ultra modern world failing can bring down everything. This article is about the 'Black Sky Event' in England in 2015 when all that worked were some landlines and FM radio. EVERYTHING ELSE, drainage, freezers, lighting, heating, fresh water, was off. This is what a cyber attack might do to us.
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Taken from an Autumn 2026 BBC programme by Professor Hannah Fry.
Gorillas offer a glimpse into our past and perhaps a vision of our future.
About 10 million years ago, their ancestors created, accidentally, the genetic lineage that led to modern humans, and, she thinks, it's safe to say that hasn't exactly worked out well for the gorillas today.
As human intelligence evolved, our impact on the world has left gorillas on the brink of extinction.
Researchers are warning that AI is humans' Gorilla Problem.
The metaphor is a warning about the risks of building machines that are vastly more intelligent than us.
It's about superhuman AI that could take over the world and threaten our existence.
That warning hasn't stopped companies like Meta, Google and OpenAI.
They're trying to build computers that surpass human intelligence in every domain.
The tech giants are spending $billions.
I ask: Do they really expect to make a fortune? Or do they expect their AI to allow their few to survive?
Professor Stuart Russell shares concerns about the future.
If we make machines more powerful than us because they are more intelligent than we are, it's not going to be easy to retain power over them forever.
If the machine is persuing an objective, but we didn't fully think through our command, we might not get the outcome we really desire.
E.g. Let's fix the problem of climate change.
Well, what causes climate change?
People.
Solve the problem by getting rid of all the people.
You can't switch it off
(like Trump said)
because the machine would have already thought of that. It won't let us stop that task.
But what if the task is to reduce human population outside North America and secular China to 1% of what it is now excepting also a list of small areas of vital suppliers and slave labour?
Or what if China says kill everyone else at the same time that the US says kill everyone else?
It might not begin with USA or China. It could begin with some nut with a subscription to an AI platform who wonders whether he could cause a little havoc.
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BUT ...
The Daily Telegraph thinks the AI bubble will burst, not least because there isn't enough electricity to power it in the US and because the US Fed must hike interest rates up to cool their economy due to a high inflation forecast.
But I did hear, in a The Economist podcast I think, that China has plenty of electricity.
And, let's not forget, Musk makes cars in China as well. He has friends there.
MEANWHILE ...
Mobs of youngsters are very likely to riot and loot. They don't like their boring lives. The welfare bill is unsustainable. Burnham is
just kicking these issues down the road (article in the Spectator).
If governments cannot find a way to forge majorities for difficult decisions, those choices will end up being imposed by the bond markets in a crisis (article in The Economist). That is, what chaos will there be when the UK's cheques bounce and the young, the old, the disabled, the sick, don't get their welfare payments; and the security guards monitoring assylum seakers don't get paid and leave their posts. THAT'S A LOT OF HUNGRY PEOPLE!
If you want to prepare to survive, you need to begin long before conditions get too bad and you can't get materials.
We won the second world war largely because the USA kept us in money and vital supplies. But if Trump and Putin get together will China join them to starve Europe out? (The Economist)
Trump said, July 23rd 2025, whoever wins AI, wins, framing the global artificial intelligence race - specifically against China - as a winner-take-all geopolitical and economic contest.
New York Times 26th October 2026: Anthropic Reveals 14-Fold Increase in Growth as It Prepares for Blockbuster I.P.O.
BBC News. Same Day: Anthropic warns of catastrophic risk to humankind from AI.
Europe's time spending more than it has is racing to its end.
It may already be reasonable to suggest that you just go ahead and build your basement now while you can still get materials. Never mind about planning permission or a party wall agreement. This is urgent and you won't be the only one. When there are huge gangs on the streets, bureacracy and enforcement will be too tied up to really bother you.
There is specific building advice lower down, as well as this whole website mostly being devoted to you building your basement that will never leak. Put a waterproof, reinforced concrete lid on top, then some soil and grass, to hide from drones and be a bomb shelter as well.
Click on either banner at the top or the bottom of this page to get to the how to build a waterproof basement homepage.
Update 23rd October 2026.
What just happened in France could happen here.
Basically, those who lent France money are worried about getting paid back. Some sold their debt (bonds) at a discount preferring to get some money back now rather than none at all in the future.
This means France cannot continue to borrow to maintain its living standard which young people already think is not good enough, and mobs have made use of the demonstrations to loot shops and burn vehicles. Organised crime (British, Albanian, Polish, Irish, Romanian) will be looking into opportunities.
Macron came to power promising that lowering taxes would bring in investment, create jobs, and bring in greater tax receipts. But it didn't work. It didn't work in the UK either. (Remember Liz Truss?)
Rachel Reeves lowered stamp duty thresholds to raise more money, but house sales collapsed, meaning less money was raised, not more. Burnham did not reverse the policy in his first budget. Governments in Europe cannot raise any more in taxation. Raising taxes backfires. AI finds people tax loopholes and tax havens to move to. Spending must be cut, especially welfare because it is huge. It will be cut when money runs out. Probably not before.
Cutting the world population to almost zero outside communist areas of China and North America would mean 0.75 billion people not 8.3.
AI will help them enormously with their genocide and avoid their troops having to witness any slaughter, except on a screen far removed.
What else is AI doing to us?
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Wealthy companies like Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Meta, Nvidia and SoftBank; and institutions like Horowitz, MGX; and individuals like Larry Ellison, Sam Altman, Musk and Zuckerberg
all pay close to zero tax because earnings reinvested in capital, such as AI, are not taxable.
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AI finds weaknesses if tasked to do so. A Google search just now responded 225 billion hostile signals per day. Some get through. AI will make them better at getting through firewalls. You can be certain that North Korea and Russia are behind a lot of the attacks.
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AI can design pandemic germs. So someone somewhere is trying to do that.
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People now use AI to reduce their tax bill. Over a dozen billionaires have left the UK. About a quarter of a million achievers left the UK for the Gulf states where they pay no tax.
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Tax revenues throughout Europe are falling because AI finds people tax loopholes faster than governments can react.
This demonstrator, recently, is years too late.
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And, ironically I think, Trump introduced tariffs to halt US monies ending up in China. But the rush to build as much AI capacity as they can means the USA has sent a trillion dollars (The Economist) to Taiwan and South Korea to buy AI racks and servers and so on assembled in low tariff countries from components sourced tariff-free from China.
If all the world's money ends up in China anyway, and China has its own AI, who is going to even be able to spend big bucks on US AI? Perhaps Musk will go from the world's wealthiest man to not even one of the world's 3,000 billionaires (3,000 according to Forbes in 2025).
Britain, Germany, France, Netherlands, Denmark, Belgium, Spain, Portugal and Italy are all under increasing strain.
Kemi Badenoch recently said in a speech she will find a way to raise more money without house values falling. How is that possible?
INFLATION.
The Bank of England
The Economist
The value of savings eroded. The value of tax receipts eroded. But the cost in value of paying back debt a little easier - whether mortgage debt or national debt.
The day we become sitting ducks, with millions of autocrat drones roaming the skies across Europe killing nearly all 743 million humans may be alarmingly close. A big boost to the health of the planet, though.
At the very least, you might consider an air raid shelter.
Small pockets of humans will be allowed to continue to live when finding the remnants living underground becomes unrealistic, even for drones. Remote smallholdings and small communities (particularly if they have no fossil fuel) will be permitted - unless and until they become troublesome.
A basement bunker will survive even if the house above is swept away.
I took this Gaffco Safe Room image from an article called What Is a Safe Room here.
I am surprised it shows the door opening outwards. I read somewhere it needs to open inwards to make it harder for an intruder to barricade you in then leave you trapped. But perhaps it is just a secret panel and you could remove it inwards as well.
You might include your own petrol generator in case of power cuts. You would not want that petrol generator running all the time you had no mains power just to keep your basement pumping out leaked water, because you need to preserve your petrol supplies.
That is why the Basement Expert is essential to your preparations to survive.
The Basement Expert. Your basement totally dry from the concrete alone.
The remaining question is, do you want 25 square metres as in the example above, or 1,000 square metres to keep a small community going for many years, Terminator-style?
Yes, I already have a serious enquiry for a basement of 1000m². The client wants a big basement, two storeys deep, under his double garage and turning area. Plus replace his big house with a new house and two storeys of basement beneath that. And a connecting corridor two storeys deep with one storey of soil on top of it.
I had several enquiries recently from people who want a basement in their garden covered in thick soil. A new idea.
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What might be shown as a swimming pool on a planning application today, might later be your reservoir of drinking water to last 20 people several years.
YOU DON'T HAVE LONG. A NEW BASEMENT COULD NOT BE BUILT ABSOLUTELY WATERPROOF AND TO LAST SEVERAL CENTURIES WITHOUT CEMENT. IF GOVERNMENT OR A LACK OF ENERGY STOP CEMENT PRODUCTION, YOU ARE TOO LATE.
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You might conclude that building a basement with my help looks a very much better idea than having a basement built to the usual poorer standards of the British Construction Industry.
Building safety group baffled and disappointed as it tears into developers still building to old standards.
You get more consumer protection when you buy a washing machine than when you buy your own home - Michael Gove.
At the Bau exhibition in Munich 2023 I found that survivalism was already on the agenda. You might like to follow this link and search yourself for more suppliers. Kolomaki, Czechia.
Building a basement for a Safe Room might be what you consider necessary to do what you can to avoid being a family fleeing with only what they can carry.
What does history tell us we should expect?
A few unpleasant lines from a book 'Sapiens. A brief history of mankind', 2011, by Yuval Noah Harari. From pages 58 and 59.
"pre-agricultural forager societies ... Periods of want and hardship were not uncommon, child mortality was high and an accident which would be minor today could easily become a death sentence. ... those unfortunates who incurred the hostility or mockery of their fellow band members probably suffered terribly. Modern foragers occasionally abandon and even kill old or disabled people who cannot keep up with the band. Unwanted children may be slain,"
To survive a complete break down of law and order, you will need to be stronger than the mobs.
The easiest way to be stronger is to be well fed and well rested in your secure accommodation as the mobs outside run out of food and lose a lot of sleep fighting each other, before coming for you.
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I read, again, The Shortest History of England by James Hawes (2021) to list when the educated elite had treated the poor extremely badly. The answer is most of the last 1,000 years. All but the 70 years of the welfare state.
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When the Romans first arrived, the SE of England had already been replaced by Gaul-ish people. the N by Germanic people, and the W by Iberian people. After the Romans, the Angles from Denmark pushed into England. Invaders subjugate those they don't slaughter.
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1066 and the Normans began enclosing land for themselves, and the Domesday book, 20 years later, has the first mention of slaves. Soldiers made the peasants work for the new landowner who had stolen their common land and fields by force. Liberty was never as great again.
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In 1547, The boy king Edward VI came to the throne aged 9. His 'Protector' introduced a new work ethic. Anyone not in work for 3 days had to do any work offered and only for food. Otherwise the would-be employer could enslave them for 2 years "and cause the said Slave by beating, chaining, or otherwise in such work and Labour how vile so ever it be". State-disciplined Protestantism.
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Then Mary, Roman Catholic, became queen and hundreds of protestants were burned.
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The industrial revolution saw the ruthless crushing of English peasantry, forcing them to work 80 hours a week in cities, with very little food available, and in concentrations of misery - so awful that urban-born men were shorter than rural-born men.
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New wealthy were making money from trade, and the new wealthy sent their sons to private schools. The educated elite grew in numbers by exploiting the poor.
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When Victoria came to the throne, the English visited other lands and forced ancient cultures to change. More theft and more exploitation.
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I could also list all the rebellions. All of which were put down with public hanging, public throat cutting and anything else so harsh rebellion stopped instantly.
The point, I think, is that the poor will not rely on the charity of the elite when things get worse than they are now. Because the elite won't be that generous while supplies are no longer replenished.
When the poor and hungry suffer intolerably, and their numbers are huge and the potential reward of taking over a nice house and everything in it so great, they will invade.
If you have neither the weapons nor security services to put them down they will kill you.
New communities without rich, without old people, without disabled, and without those who stand out as different will emerge - unless the wealthy fortify themselves first.
You may not have a lot of time.
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