Utah millionaire father of seven built a 300-acre doomsday compound stocked with food, weapons and supplies to shelter 200 people if civilisation collapses; property now doubles as a TV filming location

If you've been watching Homestead on your phones and TVs, beware that there is more of where it's coming from. Jayson Orvis, the author of the post-apocalyptic thriller, has a 300-acre doomsday compound matching the theme, according to a report from PEOPLE. Orvis has spent more than a decade on transforming the property located in Bountiful, Utah, into a self-supporting sanctuary which can shelter 200 people in the event of a civilisation-ending catastrophe. The property, home to the multimillionaire, his wife and three of his seven kids comes with a complete armoury, a machine shop, greenhouses, butchery and a massive storeroom filled with everything from medical textbooks to portable radios and leather-working tools.The location is also the set for his similar themed TV show, Angel Studios' 'Homestead: The Series', which recently returned for Season 2. The 57-year-old entrepreneur's property also boasts a "food forest" that grows fruits and vegetables without pesticides or synthetic fertilisers. “We have more asparagus and raspberries than we can pick,” he told PEOPLE. “We don’t have cattle, but we have wild deer, turkey, elk, goats, rabbits and chickens — natural meat that lives a full life and then we harvest it,” he added.Orvis is admittedly very interested in survival amid catastrophe but he believes that doomsday prepping can be less "dark, nihilistic, and antisocial." He co-wrote the post-apocalyptic thriller Black Autumn book series that was spun off into the feature film Homestead and now a TV series.The only thing that Orvis' property doesn't have is a massive blast-resistant underground concrete bunker which is the first thing secured by billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg in preparations for the end times. But the idea of relying on a fortified bunker to survive the end of civilisation isn't thinking big enough, he said to the outlet. “It’s like a weird prepper idea from the Cold War,” he said. “If you’re going to be right at ground zero [it might make sense] — but up here, you don’t need to bury yourself in the ground. And even if you did, what are you gonna have once you emerge from the ground?”If the apocalypse arrives and the society collapses, Orvis and his group of family, friends, medical experts, master gardeners, beekeepers, Navy SEALs, and even a few Afghan refugee commandos would retreat behind the gates of his compound, with its stockpile of 110,000 pounds of grain, a freshwater well and a massive array of electricity-generating solar panels.“We’ll be super well defended and we’ll also do the best we can to share and to help our neighbours along,” said Orvis, who calculated that the group could survive “indefinitely” on their cache of supplies and what they can cultivate from the land.Besides preparing for civilisation’s end, Orvis said he was determined to “redefine what preparedness means.” “One would think that it’s every man for themselves, kill or be killed [when society collapses],” Orvis said. “Jeff told me that after having seen what happened in places like Haiti, Iraq and Afghanistan, it isn’t the people with the belt-fed machine guns who survive. It’s the people who bind together and form powerful, strong communities,” he said mentioning his co-writer Jeff Kirkham, a former Green Beret with multiple tours in Afghanistan and Iraq.Orvis made a fortune more than 15 years ago after his credit repair business was acquired by an equity fund. “My dad was a firefighter turned metal fabricator and a prepper,” he said, adding that he wrote his first article for a prepper journal at the age of 15. “I grew up with chickens, bees, rabbits and gardens in the backyard, so preparedness has always been kind of a hobby,” he said.After selling his business in 2010, Orvis began focusing on philanthropic work and soon found himself “called to help” former special forces soldiers, using his social marketing skills to help them launch entrepreneurial ventures like Black Rifle Coffee and the self-reliance website retailer Readyman. This is when he met Kirkham, and the two began brainstorming ideas for their faith-based post-apocalyptic series that now includes 10 books and, said Orvis, has allowed them to tell stories of “high peril and high hope.”By then, Orvis had already begun transforming his massive property into a paradise for the point of no return. “We had a garden and food storage, but we didn’t have goats, rabbits, chickens and all this,” recalled Orvis’ wife, Pamela, 57. “So Jayson started digging into it. Before long, everything just snowballed and we took it to the next level.”However, despite all his preparedness and plans, Orvis is "pretty damn sure the world isn't going to collapse." “It is possible, but I think the odds are probably sub-2 or 1% in my lifetime,” he said.You use AI every day. Now get your AI Quotient. Take the AIQ test.