The Siege of New Hampshire

The rich and famous are building million dollar bunkers. Developers are creating bunker condos or luxury Bug Out Locations in underground (former) military sites. One such developer project: Vivos xPoint in South Dakota has only a small population of year round residents thus far, but it has already begun to suffer troubles, both physical and legal. The whole project looks like it will fail. What...

The moment of truth had arrived. Corniel's assault forces move in on the gate of Cliffhaven. A track loader with improvised armor plate is to pull open the gate. A small strike time is to rush in and neutralize the defenders. After that, two dozen conscripts are to move in to haul away the food, supplies and anything else of value. Corniel's team had not planned on there being a handful of defende...

Mic, Jeff, and Brian explore the feasibility of going "Lone Wolf" using the 2009 movie: The Road, as a jumping off point. McCarthy's very dour tale follows one man and his young son trying to travel through a bleak post-apocalyptic landscape. They encounter bad men and horrible situations. While the father is more of the stereotypical lone wolf -- always on guard, worried that everyone is a threat...

Matt and his little band of volunteers (and a couple conscripts) head down to Sawyer to hopefully distract and discourage the assault on Cliffhaven. They meet up with Gus in his shop and learn of the attackers' plan to breach the gate and loot all the food. Matt thinks up a different plan. Instead of simply creating a flanking distraction, he thinks they can even up the numbers by their wounding a...

Beyond 'beans, bullets, and bandaids' is preparing to handle the people you could be cooped up with during a crisis event. Well-vetted survival groups are rare. Families or neighbors are far more common and will be a mixed-bag of stable individuals and those with potentially problematic personalities. Recognizing the issues early and dealing with them can prevent internal conflict from complicatin...

Morgan disappears overnight. Matt suspects she went to Cliffhaven since Emma was talking up the better accommodations there. Matt is concerned that she may tell Haff about Matt's stored food, since she had seen his storage. Just in case, Matt moves his food to a hidden location. Sure enough, two men show up that night to steal the food, but found nothing. The next day, shot are heard coming from S...

Since Mic sometimes mentions the Twilight Zone episode titled "The Shelter" for it's Only-For-Us prepper trope, he figured it was time to actually take a DoomCast look at it. Mic, Jeff, and Brian re-watched the episode (Season 3, episode 3, October 1961) as a refresher. They identify timeless prepper realities -- like you can't prepare for everyone, and some of the psychology in mob mentality in R...

Matt's ex-wife pleads to be let in, saying she has nowhere else to go. Matt is resolute about not letting her in. Nicole suggests the barn's tool room which she had set up for herself to live in. Matt still wants nothing to do with it but does not stop Nicole from helping Morgan get settled. Matt relives many of the bad memories he had tried to forget. The next day, he avoids any contact with Morg...

Much ink has been spilled over how TEOTWAWKI things would be if there ever was an all-out nuclear exchange between the US and Russia or the US and China. Mass death. Lingering radiation and the prospect of a few years of nuclear winter to starve out whoever survived the blasts. But, what if there were a less-total exchange? Instead of hundreds of nukes, maybe only a dozen between two lesser, but s...

Matt has a change of heart about Nicole living in his barn's workroom. His solution, however, is uncomfortably awkward -- she could occupy the loft in HIS cabin. After her near-run-in with Haff, Matt stresses over how to offer the upgrade without sounding creepy. Nicole is grateful and offers to cook him supper, which got a little playful. Then, an unexpected guest arrived. Show Your Support. You'...

The movie 2012 (released in 2009) is a smörgåsbord of disasters -- solar flares, volcanoes, earthquakes, fires, flaming rocks from the sky -- just about everything but zombies. All of that was what the producers imagined might happen when the Mayan calendar ended in December, 2012. The many scenarios are too over-the-top to be of any practical prepper value, but if the movie is taken as a grand-sc...

Matt checks on Gus, who did not move into Haff's secure compound, Cliffhaven, like the rest of the village's residents. The "tax men" still sneak in to search for food to steal but find none. While working up on the hilltop collecting firewood, a father and teen-aged daughter come running out of the woods, pursued by two armed men. They demand that the man and girl be returned to Cliffhaven. Matt,...

Mic, Brian, and Jeff examine six "dooms" that are new or have been floating around on the internet for a while. There are far more than just six, of course, but for this episode, each of your DoomCast crew examined just two of them. Each of the dooms had in common that they were (and/or are) wildly absurd and usually super doom-y. They also get just enough science-y jargon mixed in to sound legit....

While Matt and Nicole work up on his mountain, a severe nor'easter bears down. They rush to cover their harvests and batten down for the storm. The next morning, they assess the damage and overhear an armed assault going on down in Sawyer. Fearing that Gus had become involved, Matt rushes down, gathering some Hill Road residents to help. Their flanking action forces the "tax men" to flee. Richard...

A special episode: an audio walk-around during this year's maple syrup harvest, from donning snowshoes to go out to install the taps, to collection and boiling the sap down to syrup. Along the way are a couple of diversions. Posts are uploaded to Buy Me A Coffee and Patreon with photos to accompany this audio experience. Photos on Buy Me A Coffee Same post on Patreon (same photos) Support this pod...

After leaving the village of Sawyer, the "tax men" tried shaking down Abi for food too. Matt's arrival warns them away. Abi prevails upon Matt to teach Steve and Miles how to shoot -- which they've never done before -- in hopes of putting up a better defense against the next demanding beggars. Matt reluctantly agrees, but only after completes some of his pressure canning chores. The shooting lesso...

The War in Iran has already had an effect on life here in the US home front. Higher gas prices is the first to be felt. What other effects might be looming on the horizon? What might the prudent prepper do to be positioned to handle those effects? Mic and Jeff discuss the ramifications of potential supply chain disruptions or higher food and supply prices. A wildcard is the possibility of Iran-lin...

Matt has his new (and not particularly wanted) guest, Nicole, help with his harvesting chores. While digging potatoes, his garden fork breaks. He takes that and a few other broken steel things down to Gus's shop to be welded. He brought his extra battery and inverter to power Gus's welder. A truckload of men arrive in Sawyer soliciting food "donations" for what they describe as a state relief prog...

As if part of the World Economic Forum's agenda, the business world is embracing the Subscription Model for just about everything. You will own nothing and instead rent it from corporations. What's so bad about that? Mic, Brian, and Jeff get a hot rant going over what's wrong with everything -- from clothing to friendship -- becoming a subscription. For one thing, the more of your life you outsour...

Chores resume as Matt feels less beat up. He encounters some needy but fussy folks in an SUV. Matt visits Abi's house to trade eggs for salt. She laments that her son and family don't help out. While Matt helps Abi haul in firewood, the woman who the three thugs had assaulted walks up Abi's driveway hoping to find a place to stay while her car gets fixed. Abi says her house is full, so she volunte...

A developing trend, particularly among younger preppers goes by the name Homesteading 2.0. This hybrid of self-sufficiency and yet continued engagement with "the system" runs counter to the "old prepper" idealized vision of the totally off-grid, remote, self-sufficient homestead. An ideal that very few actually attained. So, why was it held up as the ideal? Some historical light helps explain why....

Matt goes about his daily chores, still suffering from the injuries he sustained in the fight the day before. Abi persuades him to attend a town meeting in the village of Sawyer, to learn more about the outage. Matt reluctantly agrees. At the meeting, in Gus's two-bay repair shop, the residents learn that the outage is widespread. When they worry about their futures, a tall man named Richard Haff...

The group discussed the two Greenland movies, focusing on their prepper relevance. Jeff provided a synopsis of the first movie, which follows Gerard Butler's family as they try to reach a safety bunker in Greenland before a comet hits Earth. The group criticized the movie's lack of realism and reliance on coincidences, but agreed it had some prepper lessons, such as the importance of having a bug-...

The start of the 4th novelette. Matt Stakel lives alone on "his" mountain in the White Mountains of NH. His quiet, hermit-like lifestyle consists mostly of the slow rhythm of harvests and subsistence chores. A routine harvest of berries down near the highway is interrupted by a group of three young men assaulting a women whom they had driven off the road. Against his own self-advice to not get inv...

The Doomcast team discussed some online predictions for 2026, focusing on economic challenges, political unrest, and technological advancements. Brian highlighted a K-shaped economy, fragmented supply chains, and rising civil unrest, while Jeff emphasized AI's role in healthcare and geopolitical tensions. Mic shared predictions about media fragmentation and potential misinformation. The group expl...