For sale: the ultimate cottage for weathering the apocalypse

Are you ready for the end of times?

The doomsday clock — a symbolic clock created by scientists to represent how near humanity is to man-made catastrophes such as nuclear war or climate disaster — is currently set at two minutes to midnight, which has only happened once before, in 1953, at the height of the cold war. The end, some seem to think, is nigh. 

Luckily, someone is selling the perfect starter cottage for the aspiring doomsday prepper. Alaskan Kevin Cross has put his off-the-grid, self-sustaining cottage in the northern wilderness up for sale, and it comes packed with enough supplies to get a person through all sorts of apocalypse, from alien invasion to zombie uprising.

Solar panels power the home in the summer and charge cell batteries for future use. (Credit: realtor.com) Cross acquired the cottage six years ago from a military vet who had put a lot of time into making it disaster-ready. It is powered mostly by solar energy, and in the summer, the excess solar power gets stored in cell batteries. There are not one, not two, but three backup generators, plus a wood stove, a backup fuel-oil furnace, and a greywater system, and a well that provides drinking water.

Sound good? There’s more.

This cottage has gone beyond basic survival, and is incredibly well stocked with equipment for everything from farming to welding. Included in the sale will be a tractor (which was originally flown in via helicopter), a pickup truck, a small-scale lumber mill, welding torches, a wood chipper, snow machines, and a garage full of tools.

And if residents ever found themselves without food, they’d be in the perfect spot to go out and get their own. The cottage sits at the edge of an unknown lake and is within a mile of the Yentna River, where salmon can be caught. It’s also at the edge of two hunting zones, and there’s a vegetable garden on the property itself.

With all these survivalist perks, the price tag of $159,000 (US) is quite reasonable. And for preppers who also like the little comforts, the cabin itself is actually quite nice, not at all the kind of creepy bunker one tends to associate with preparing for the end of the world.

But of course, there are downsides to staying in an isolated cottage in the middle of the Alaskan wilderness.

“It’s 75 miles from the nearest road, or any kind of town,” Cross told Realtor.com. “That’s 75 miles through woods that you cannot walk through. You might be able to snowmobile through them in the winter, and it’s questionable if you can get there by boat in the summer. For all intents and purposes, this property is designed for somebody to go away and not see anybody.”

If that sounds appealing to you, you might just be the perfect owner for this little cottage in the woods — not to mention the last person standing after the apocalypse.

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