Billionaires Said Stockpiling Land as 'Apocalypse Insurance'

A rising number of American billionaires reportedly are stockpiling land as "apocalypse insurance," in the event of an apocalyptic event, be it a viral epidemic, nuclear war, or cataclysmic pole shift.

Forbes recently reported that the super-wealthy are making significant land grabs in America's heartland, where the climate is mild and the locations are conducive to survivalism, farming, and living on the land.

Many of the richest families have been grabbing up massive amounts of farmland around the world, with nearly all the property far away from coastal areas and in locations conducive to self-survival, farming and coal mining, Forbes reported.

It appears that dry territories in the United States such as Montana, New Mexico, Wyoming and Texas are all very popular regions for the wealthiest individuals.

Professor Donald L. Turcotte, an expert in planetary geology at the University of California Davis, Earth and Planetary Science Department, told Forbes that predictions of earthquakes causing a planetary shift and coastal flooding “is for the most part nonsense."

However, “he did say it is far more likely an asteroid hit would cause a polar shift. This could ultimately lead to cataclysmic change and a map similar to Scallions original vision,” Forbes reported.

Many billionaires have private planes "ready to depart at a moment's notice." The wealthy also have stockpiled weaponry and generators.

None of the billionaires named by Forbes has said publicly that their vast amounts of land would be used for apocalypse preparations.

Reid Hoffman, the cofounder of LinkedIn and a notable investor, told The New Yorker earlier this year he estimated that more than 50% of Silicon Valley billionaires had bought some level of "apocalypse insurance," like an underground bunker.

Cable and communications titan John Malone is the nation's biggest individual landowner with 2.2 million acres across six states, including huge swaths of Maine and New Hampshire, Business Insider reports.

Malone, who is a nature lover and outdoorsman, told Forbes in 2011 that he purchased the land as an investment.

Forbes also spotlighted these real-estate stashes by business titans:

Media titan Ted Turner (2,000,000 acres in Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico and North Dakota.
Railroad and oil magnate Philip Anschultz holds 434,000 acres in Wyoming.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has 400,000 acres in Texas.
Stan Kroenke, who owns a sports-and-entertainment holding company, owns 225,162 acres in Montana.

(Newsmax wires services contributed to this report).