Bruce Beach

Ark Two
Ark Two with its numerous buses. The name makes an allusion to Noah's Ark from the Bible.[2]

Intended to survive the coming nuclear Armageddon, the Ark Two is a DIYFile:Wikipedia's W.svg fallout shelter built by Bruce Beach some 100km north-west of Toronto,File:Wikipedia's W.svg Canada.[3] It was constructed from 1980 until 1985 and is composed of 42 buried school buses.[4]

Controversy

Throughout its history, Ark Two sparked legal conflicts from the Canadian government; the shelter was built without a permit because Beach failed to get one:[4]

The biggest problems in building a shelter are political and bureaucratic. The project has not been favorably received by the local and provincial governments. There is a psychology against shelters and the general opinion is that anyone who builds one - is crazy. There is an old saying that you can't fight city hall, and after many years of trying to get a building permit we went ahead and built the shelter anyway because we felt that it was a matter of life and death.

Beach also elaborates on the numerous court battles he went through:[4]

Government can cause one endless misery after another and we had to go to court over 30 times to contest wrongful orders that the shelter be destroyed. The government spent over $250,000 dollars fighting us and most people simply do not have the resources, tenacity, or comprehension to endure such battles. By 1990, when I stopped counting, it had been subject to over 30 court and commission appearances and that number has greatly increased in the years that followed. Legal costs mounted to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Penn & Teller: Bullshit!

Ark Two is featured in an episode of Penn & Teller: Bullshit!, but it wasn't filmed because it was locked down by the fire department for being an unsafe fire hazard.[5] Bruce Beach made an arse of himself by predicting the end of the world sometime in December 2002; the episode aired in January 2003.[6]

Writings

Books
  • Society After Doomsday
  • TRIAD Individual Networking: Preparedness For Disastrous Times

Other pieces
  • Reconstruction of Society after Nuclear War[7]
  • You will survive Doomsday[8]
gollark: Because furnaces are actually an interesting feature.
gollark: Cleverness? How is there cleverness in using resources to make a chunkloader...?
gollark: If we had infinite processing power on all servers, I expect that chunkloading wouldn't exist. Unfortunately we don't so it does, and it seems stupid to spend resources on things to get around, well, unintended features.
gollark: Sure, I don't see why not.
gollark: I'm sure that if Mojang *could* they'd get rid of chunks and have everything be loaded constantly. Unfortunately they can't.

See also

References
  1. 'Doomsday Preppers': Bruce Beach On Prepping For Apocalypse And Being Called 'Crazy' by Annette Bourdeau (12/04/2012 11:35 EST | Updated 12/04/2012 11:35 EST) Huffington Post.
  2. http://webpal.org/SAFE/aaaarktwo/index.htm
  3. Jarvis, Carolyn (host) (February 25, 2012). "End of the world: How to survive Armageddon". 16:9. Season 4. Episode 14. Global Television Network.
  4. http://webpal.org/SAFE/aaaarktwo/history.htm
  5. Penn & Teller: Bullshit!, episode 1.04, End of the World
  6. The End-of-the-World Delusion: How Doomsayers Endanger Society by Justin Deering (2012) iUniverse. ISBN 1475913559. p. 134
  7. http://www.webpal.org/reconstruction.htm
  8. http://webpal.org/SAFE/aaasurvival/books/doomsday/index.htm
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