Fortitude Ranch is preparing to sell franchises for the ultimate in pandemic-era concepts: a members-only survival community equipped to ride out any type of collapse or disaster and long-term loss of law and order.
Members will pay a few thousand dollars, on average, per person per year for what founders bill as survival for the middle class. They’ll store their weapons on site—one AR-15 shotgun for each person is recommended, for defensive purposes only—plus clothing, eyeglasses and backup prescriptions.
In peace time members can use the camps for outdoor retreats; two weeks free is included. In a disaster, they’ll be pressed into service to help the ranch manager serve guard duty, shoot at invaders, prepare meals and hunt for food—and wait out the chaos for as long as it takes. “Prepare for the worst but enjoy the present,” is their motto.
“I’ve been a prepper for a long time but figured out a decade ago I’m not going to survive on my own,” said Drew Miller, CEO of Fortitude Ranch, who earned a doctorate from Harvard and is a retired colonel in the U.S. Air Force.
If there’s a cyberattack on the electrical grid, for example, “those systems will be down for a year. Studies show, you could lose 90 percent of the population. Especially with the chaos of a loss of electricity, the lack of law and order, jails can’t function. People will form groups, we call them marauders. If you’ve got stuff prepared, you’ve actually made yourself a good target.”
He ticks off different disasters and their likelihood: avian flu, meteor strikes, nano technology blow-ups or artificial intelligence gone rogue, and many more. “If you’re paying attention and thinking, you can see them coming. You can prepare for them,” he said, but he believes not on your own. “You can’t do it by yourself. If you’re a lone wolf, and especially if you’ve stockpiled a lot of food, a marauder comes, you’re going to get killed.”
Civil unrest leads to more members
Interest in Fortitude Ranch membership has soared in the last couple of years, he said, which led to their decision to offer franchises—their goal is to have enough survival communities so every member is only one gas tank away. “People recognize prepping a lot more,” he said, using the term “prepping” for people who prepare for the end times. “It’s less the pandemic, it’s less COVID, than it is what happened the last few years in Portland” and other large cities. “The riots. If a big group of people decide they want to start looting, police can’t stop it. The police don’t have the power to do it.”
Enter Fortitude Ranch, which has five operating communities with a sixth in the land-purchase phase, and is a couple of weeks away from completing its franchise disclosure document, Miller said, adding he would not reveal details in the FDD until it is complete. He will not say the number of members in Fortitude Ranch so far, “for security purposes.” For a disaster, you need at least 50 members to operate the compound.
“It’s not an easy thing to run, we spent years developing how we operate. As you know, every franchise has an operations manual. Ours is over 100 pages. Our mission is to keep people alive. But there’s so many things” included in its manual, such as “how to use radiation detectors, how to mediate radioactive fallout,” and more.
Each compound will have a professional ranch manager on site at all times, and all ranch managers must be former military or law enforcement, construction experience desired.
Miller said the company has been profitable for three years; two established ranches, in West Virginia and Colorado, are turning a profit, COO Steve Rene said.
‘We will survive a collapse’
Why would a franchisee sign a 10-year agreement for a franchise that is preparing for the end of the world? “During a collapse, obviously they don’t give a crap about profit, it’s about staying alive,” Miller said. No. 1: “We will survive a collapse. Our primary mission is saving our members’ lives, so we believe our franchisees’ primary goal will be keeping themselves alive, and other people alive.”
No. 2, “when it’s over, when law and order finally gets established, the opportunities for the survivors are going to be great. So many other people are gone, the survivors will have a lot of opportunities.”
For the facility itself, he said, “to get a 100-member capacity, you’re planning to invest a half million dollars. Our rooms are small, we have three different types: spartan, economy and luxury.” For spartan, “you get a bunk bed and a hallway. Your membership, say a 15-, 25-year membership, it could cost you a thousand a year. Most people want a separate room, so now you’re looking at economy to luxury, and those cost quite a bit more,” he said.
Membership fees are listed in a detailed table at fortituderanch.com. The down payment for an individual, spartan membership for five years is $1,800; plus $200 quarterly and an annual fee of $268, for food re-stocking. On the opposite end, a 50-year luxury membership for a family of five with a toilet, is $35,750 down payment, $1,250 quarterly and $1,340 annual fee.
Forbes magazine called the ranch “survival for the middle class,” he said. “A lot of people have nice facilities, but they tend to be top politicians; the government takes care of itself. And then rich people” will be fine, too. “A survival condo is like $3 million, and then a huge condo fee.”
He said the COVID-19 pandemic along with civil unrest has led to big gains in memberships and interest in survivalist communities. “More and more people are getting out of the big cities and switching to rural locations. It used to be when I was looking at a property, I was the only one looking, but that changed two years ago,” Miller said.
Miller asks media who come for tours to not reveal the exact location. However, “we do not rely on secrecy,” he said. “If you’re alive, people, marauder groups will find you, trying to find food, trying to find guns and gas they can steal, and they will find you wherever you are. We will be defending ourselves.”
A gazebo with a dual purpose: wine and cheese, or shooting
He said the compounds have features with dual purposes, like a gazebo in the West Virginia compound. “That gazebo, to use castle terminology, it’s called a bastion. It’s dual-purpose use. It’s wine and cheese, in good times. But in bad times, we can shoot down from that gazebo. There’s just a lot of expertise that we’ve developed over the last decade.”
New members are trained in how to approach a Fortitude Ranch, among other matters. “They’ll have your name, now you’ll answer a challenge question,” such as what’s your favorite movie. “And it’s Terminator 2,” so then you can enter, for example.
Members are told they will have to help big time in a disaster, and will be busy, especially in the early days. “Rules are set by FR staff, and members will be expected to act at their direction until such time as the security threat ends or local law enforcement is restored,” the member agreement states. “No member will be forced to leave unless FR staff determines they are a threat to community survival.”
After a while, even in the end times, Miller said, things will normalize. “We’ll have movie nights, and eventually we’ll get to the point where we’ll have some good times.”
Coming up: A visit to the new Fortitude Ranch in Wisconsin, at an undisclosed location, shows building a survival community takes a lot of work and money.