The idea
Ever considered an apocalypse house? I do not mean a hole dug under Wisconsin or New Zealand, where preppers, doomers, and billionaires hope to get the chance to role-play survival. I mean a domestic space that is a bit more affordable, sustainable, or secure if the really quite bad of viral infection, divisive politics, and uncertain economy gets bad bad.
The COVID pandemic gave Americans a taste of Soviet-style shortages and restricted activities that many had never experienced before. The anxiety of larger disruptions is made worse by knowing there are 350 percent more of us globally than there were in the Depression, and we are exponentially more dependent on interconnected physical and digital systems for our food, energy, finance, employment, communications, and transportation.
Most people in the world live where they must make their stands, whatever happens next, in owned or mortgaged houses or rented apartments that they can or cannot afford. Some move addresses, of course, retire to other places, or vacation. The change is that many in the American middle-class now seem interested in finding special places of refuge. The apocalypse house is a dream of privilege turned somewhat desperate.
Many Americans say they would like to escape abroad to live elsewhere. The refuge destinations often mentioned at the start of the second George W. Bush administration, another fraught political period, were Canada or…Paris. No one I knew emigrated though. In the Trump era people speak more often of Portugal, Thailand, Panama, Japan, Chile, even the country of Georgia. (Part of that difference is that countries like this are often cheaper or easier to take residence in, and telework now exists.) This is a nonpartisan urge to a degree; Elon Musk would like to move to Mars.
All countries and planets have their own risks and challenges, of course, including different atmospheres, political systems, laws, visa requirements, housing options, and norms in language and culture. But I do hear happy stories from abroad. A friend’s uncle, who is severely disabled, got tired of U.S. healthcare and social services and moved suddenly to the Philippines to marry a woman he barely knew. His family was worried, especially after he dropped contact. When they tracked him down, he was seemingly happy and living in a village, where his money went far, as the adopted patriarch of an extended, apparently caring family.
… many in the American middle-class now seem interested in finding special places of refuge. The apocalypse house is a dream of privilege turned somewhat desperate.
Staying in the United States is no guarantee of success either. Choices can be tricky. Jim, with whom I served in the army, bought one house then another in increasingly remote spots in the eastern U.S., looking for peace from the foolishness of modern life. He ended up feeling isolated in old age and moved out of the mountains, back to civilization.
My friend Larry, who lives in Los Angeles, had me drive up the Mississippi valley a year ago to look at an apocalypse house on his behalf, an old river mansion being sold for cheap. He could afford both his apartment in LA and a mortgage on the house. If the economy soured, he would have the option of moving into the house and storing his business’ inventory there, to save on both rent and storage units. If no apocalypse came, he reasoned, he could resell the house. It was magnificent in its way, but repairs were needed on everything from its roof to its wiring to its rotting wooden gingerbread, and those would come dear. It looked like the kind of place that, if he did not inhabit it full time, was six months from burning down mysteriously. He knew no one in that town, and I advised Larry to forget it.
Another friend lives on a wooded ridge at the edge of the Ozarks, where self-sufficiency seems possible, though she knows her neighbors along the ridgeline, which is nice. She keeps a garden. Firewood for the stove is plentiful, and she could easily live without electricity if the grid failed. She told me local deer would be a good source of protein in a crisis. But the deer would be hunted out in days by the neighbors, who are all heavily armed, and without electricity, water could not be pumped up the ridge. Also, it is meth country, with resultant crime by a few of the neighbors, even while society is still functioning.
That is, crises come in specific forms, which might determine needs for an apocalypse house. Will you need a well or stream, and seclusion? Or a bus to a workplace and mutual aid groups? How comfortable do you hope to be? What will you do for leisure?
Here, for example, is a map that purports to show the best places to live in the United States to avoid future climate disasters such as hurricanes, tornadoes, fire, heat, and drought. The ideal spot seems to be a thin band across northern Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, between Lake Superior and Lake Michigan. Poet and writer Jim Harrison had an (emotional) apocalypse cabin up there. People hunt and fish, and fresh water is abundant. The landscape is beautiful, sparsely populated, and sometimes dangerous. Note that Harrison left his cabin, sometimes suddenly and especially in winter, to go home or to Hollywood or Key West, when he got sick of feeling isolated.
My cogitations
I was never in a position to be able to consider an apocalypse house, but then I never thought in those terms exactly. I worked in offices and classrooms, and my wife and I owned one house at a time, as we could afford and as the VA loan allows. Our children needed to be able to attend decent schools, and we made our stand in university towns.
My boys are grown now. I live simply but very well in a rented townhouse near St. Louis, for about 35 percent of what Larry pays in LA. I am debt-free and have a retirement account, such as it is, and will be eligible for early Social Security soon, if I choose to take it. Twelve thousand attendees at the annual Association of Writers & Writing Programs Conference would cut my throat in a dark hipster bar for my job. It would be pretty to think that things were stable enough that I could go on this way for years.
But the world is changing rapidly. Can I hope the market will continue to grow my 401k—indeed, that it will not tank it? That Social Security and Medicare will remain an option? That federal cuts or AI will not reach into my workplace? The times make me feel as if I need to grab any resources I have and sprint down a narrow beam toward the future, trying not to fall off.
Friends and I consider apocalypse houses all the time now. Two of them would like to go in with me on some plot of land with significant acreage and a house or cabin on it. For them, it is a “just in case” idea and an investment; I would need to live there. A third offered to split the cost of one of the many cheap, attractive houses being sold in Japan. Their visa and residency rules are tricky, and I will not be able to fly back to the States every few months.
The times make me feel as if I need to grab any resources I have and sprint down a narrow beam toward the future, trying not to fall off.
I look just for myself too. I have become an expert on using Zillow and focus on the northeast, the upper Midwest, and other places where I have more experience, such as St. Louis or Southern Illinois. I think hard about how any of us pay for anything—with money, labor, or time—and try to imagine different combinations of the three, with an emphasis on my labor, that would allow me to buy a comfortable, secure home I could make charming.
Financial advisors have told me over the years that you should never cash in retirement to buy a house; instead, they said, get a mortgage at an interest rate lower than what the 401k earns, which makes sense, I guess. But what if I buy a little place with a mortgage, to eliminate rent, and count on my retirement to continue to pay the note, but the market wipes out my 401k? If I really thought a recession (or worse) was coming, should I pay for a place in cash while the retirement account has value, then live without a house payment? The anxiety comes with the answer: that all depends. I am willing to at least consider most options.
Larry pretends to be horrified I might choose to live anywhere other than a big city or in deep wilderness (somehow with all the conveniences, he imagines). But I love a good river town, for instance, and visited one recently. Small houses are for sale that are both incredibly cheap, even for the Midwest, and out of the flood zone, assuming the levee holds. Locals talk about the good it would do the town if it became the official gateway for tourism to the national forest that lies across the bottom of the state. The Dari-Barr serves hot breakfasts and a full menu of homemade pies so good that a friend and I ate pie for dessert after breakfast. Afterward we drove around the town and up onto the levee to look at the Ohio River. My friend, who lives nearby on a nature preserve, explained the politics of the town, which seem to be about what they were in 1859.
Could I be happy there? That is important. Committing to a house that might not sell again is like sealing your fate, at least if you cannot afford more than one residence. Besides, I cannot know where my sons will land, and I do not want to be too far from them in the future, if possible. I pretend to patience in order not to be rash, but the common saying is that everyone gets more conservative as they age. I am feeling a need for stability that simply does not exist. I do not like that contradiction. It makes me want to hit the road permanently and vagabond my way through old age in, oh, say, Asia.
Another apocalypse house I looked at
I will tell you that a week after that trip, I drove two hours south of St. Louis to my hometown, in former coal country in Southern Illinois, to look at a property. It is an apocalypse house if there ever was one: $79,000, brick, two stories, 1700 square feet, apparently as structurally sound and solid as a small fortress.
One reason it is priced that low is that the entire bottom floor is a garage for three cars. The second floor is a cozy, dirty apartment that needs work, including a bathroom tear-out just at the edge of my skills. Hardwood floors have been replaced with manufactured vinyl ones installed incorrectly, so the seams of the fake boards all line up across the living room, and the only solution now would be a giant rug.
I am feeling a need for stability that simply does not exist. I do not like that contradiction. It makes me want to hit the road permanently and vagabond my way through old age in, oh, say, Asia.
There is not much of a view, except for the fire station in one direction, and my grandparents’ former house and the house of some cousins, whose last name was House, in the other. That is one nostalgic view, and the street looks just as it did when I spent so much time on it as a kid. But all those people are long dead, and in fact I do not know many people in town anymore.
There is not a ton of natural light in the upstairs apartment, but that reinforces the feeling of shelter. The realtor who met me there in his cowboy boots and pickup suggested it would make a great sniper’s nest if the world was ending. His comments made me imagine a defensive action against zombies on the only stairs to the apartment. I would have the high ground—ideal.
Another reason the property (“house” seems inaccurate) is priced low, I suspect, is that it is next door to a big Victorian-looking funeral home that has operated for decades. The family that runs the funeral home owns it and two other properties on that block, including a large apartment building and the place I was looking at. My mother’s funeral was held at that funeral home. Friends are shocked when I tell them that the director’s office, where I sat choosing music and readings, had taxidermied heads on the wall of animals he had shot. Being from there, it did not bother me all that much.
The first floor of the property for sale had shelves built along two walls, which held dozens of Canada Goose decoys.
“I wouldn’t want to have to set all those,” my realtor said.
The property may, for all I know, have been used as living quarters for funeral home staff, or to park hearses, or to store embalming chemicals. Could it have ever held bodies?, I wondered, as I walked around. My mother’s? I wondered if that bothered me and decided no. We are talking about the apocalypse here. Besides, living across the alley from a funeral home would save gas when the time came.
I have a thing for properties that remind me of living-working spaces portrayed in books and films. A favorite is the house-warehouse in Steinbeck’s Cannery Row, in which Doc, a marine biologist, lives during the Depression, jitterbugs with a lady friend, and throws hilariously disastrous parties.
I figured I could lease the bottom floor of this property to Larry for his business, or build out the garage for more rooms, or create a separate apartment to rent for income. I would replace the garage doors with big windows and people doors. They make prefabbed units like that; I have seen them. Monthly payments would be low.
The realtor who met me there in his cowboy boots and pickup suggested it would make a great sniper’s nest if the world was ending. His comments made me imagine a defensive action against zombies on the only stairs to the apartment. I would have the high ground—ideal.
I asked how the property was zoned; maybe I would open the soup stand downstairs that I have dreamed of for years, write my next books upstairs, and jitterbug on rainy nights instead of reading the worsening news.
I am a stranger in that town now, but soup would help. Driving in, I tried to evaluate it not as a former resident who brought his kids to parades and festival now and then, but as a future resident. It has many of the problems that all of small town America has, but if it was ever unable to provide power, water, and sewer to residents, America would have bigger problems than that. I will have to think about it.
