Bill Berkowitz for BuzzFlash: Survivalist Barrett Moore Went From Mercenary Honcho to Apocalypse Pimp to Financial Predator
October 12, 2021
By Bill Berkowitz
In Greenland, a 2020 American disaster thriller directed by Ric Roman Waugh and written by Chris Sparling, a planet-destroying comet, nicknamed Clarke, appearing out of nowhere, is hurtling toward earth, and there is no way to stop it; Its debris will destroy most of planet. That’s the bad news. The good news for John Garrity, a Scottish-born structural engineer (Gerard Butler), his wife Alison, (Morena Baccarin) -- from whom he is estranged -- and his young son Nathan, is that because of Garrity’s professional skills, the family has been chosen to survive at a top-secret government bunker in Greenland. The movie revolves around the Garrity family’s mammoth struggle to get to the bunker.
A few years back, The Guardian’s Keith Stuart reported on a simulation -- staged by Tara O’Toole and Thomas Inglesby of the Johns Hopkins Center for Civilian Biodefense Strategies -- of a biological attack on the U.S. “What they discovered was that the country was ill prepared to cope. Within two weeks there would be enormous civilian casualties, a catastrophic breakdown in essential institutions, and mass civil unrest. Food supplies, electricity and transport infrastructures would all collapse.”
Biological attacks are not the only catastrophic threat to humankind. Numerous potential catastrophes are lurking, both natural and man-made, including pandemics, ecological disasters, nuclear weapons, terrorism, and experimental technological accidents.
All major governments have contingency plans in place to ensure their survival after a global disaster. But individuals cannot be assured of their inclusion. So what to do? There are many survival guides. Some evangelical Christians have been hawking survival kits, while clever entrepreneurs offer well-guarded underground enclaves. The 2009 television program “Surviving Disaster,” hosted by Former Navy SEAL Cade Courtley, provided specific instructions on surviving a disaster, but enduring the many obstacles that occur within each catastrophe.
Enter Barrett Moore, the founder of the mercenary outfit Triple Canopy. Moore had a big idea about survival, organized around the slogan “Be Prepared.”
Barrett Moore’s Survival Scheme
Barrett Moore’s plan wasn’t particularly coherent, but it was a big idea. Moore wanted you to believe that we are teetering on the edge of catastrophe and he had the solution. Moore would create the ultimate survival haven for worried wealthy people. For several hundred thousand dollars, families would be protected from jihadist terrorists, economic disaster, electromagnetic pulses, pandemics, and the collapse of civilization. All would be safe at a northern Michigan compound. Moore called his concept, “Life Continuity.”
Moore’s scheme for surviving disasters was recently reported by The Intercept’s Sam Biddle, who described Moore as “offering to friends and associates with enough money a chance at private salvation, claiming that he and his team could whisk them away” to safety.
Meanwhile, back at the Moore compound, the family has a long history in Pellston, Michigan, known as the “ice box of the nation,” according to the Northern Express. In a 2007 story, the newspaper reported that Moore, executive chief officer of Sovereign Deed, “has intimate ties with Pellston. Since the late 1800s, his family has owned property on nearby Burt Lake, where he spent many happy summers.”
If anything can be said about Moore it is that he has led quite the colorful mercenary, grifting and hustling life, “profiting from unpreparedness dates back to the Iraq War, when Triple Canopy, the mercenary firm he co-founded in 2002, cashed in on the American military’s profoundly unprepared invasion,” Biddle reported.
Two years later, Moore left Triple Canopy “over accusations of ‘unjust enrichment,’ intellectual property theft, piracy, violating of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, and using his ‘power as CEO to force Triple Canopy to enter into a ‘sham’ licensing agreement,” according to court documents.’”
After the lawsuit was settled in 2005, Moore, who described himself as a “seasoned, contrarian business executive and serial entrepreneur with extensive strategy, security and supply chain experience,” having “spearheaded a series of start-ups in the manufacturing, government contracting, technology, international business, and intelligence/security sectors,” became “an end-times steward three years later,” Biddle noted.
Unlike many Christian End Timesers – think televangelist Jim Bakker and his survival packets, and phony coronavirus cures -- or the late Harold Camping’s failed End Times predictions, Moore isn’t hawking The Rapture, although as Biddle reports, there is definitely something scriptural about his approach.
According to Biddle:
Life Continuity works like the grandest of all possible insurance plans, a hedge against doomsday geared toward the right-leaning rich. Just as the most opulent health and dental plans entitle patients to spa-like care in the case of personal misfortune, Moore offered a vision of serenity and safety in case of global mayhem: the hope that while cities burned and nation states crumbled, your family could continue their way of life. It was an almost biblical promise of salvation and hope amid chaos, right down to promotional materials that read like they were plucked from Scripture. At one point, Moore’s venture was named Sovereign Deed. His hideaway for the chosen was called the Haven.
In search of investors, Moore claimed that his “operations will eventually have a global reach. … New York, London and Tokyo have already suffered terrorist attacks and natural/manmade disasters can certainly occur world-wide. We anticipate that, eventually, our clients will be as diverse and varied as the events from which we help them recover.” Life Continuity’s Havens would be “replete with ‘long-term facilities featuring private accommodations, food preparation facilities, medical facilities, water and waste treatment, protective barriers against radiological, biological and chemical biohazards, communication facilities, and security controls.’”
Keeping it on the down low was imperative for Moore’s clients. No need to tell your family, friends or neighbors about the havens. So if any of the myriad of disasters, natural or man-made should befall the planet, Life Continuity will be there with an evacuation team ready to spirit clients from their homes “to their premium post-apocalyptic hideaway, whether by car, boat, or jet,” Biddle pointed out.
Not surprisingly, none of the projects existed: “But Sovereign Deed faced a major gap between its ambitions and its reality: There was no global communications network, no ComPaks, no fleet of planes, and only one Haven — nothing more than a single-family home on Michigan’s Burt Lake, a scenic Lower Peninsula destination for water sports devotees and outdoor-inclined families.”
There’s lots more to Sam Biddle’s Intercept piece: Moore creates numerous websites; gets support from Glenn Beck; hooks clients fearful of the threat of Islamic terrorism and America’s cultural decline; develops a friendship and financial relationship with Brad Thor, the author of New York Times bestselling techno-thriller novels that revolve around a world defined by multiple dangers (a relationship whose breakdown Biddle goes into in great detail); finagles tax breaks from the Michigan state legislature; continues hunting investors; makes slews of unfulfilled promises; and eventually flames out.
Biddle writes: “the Life Continuity project itself was a byzantine disaster unfolding over more than a decade, resulting only in a handful of overwrought construction projects and a tangle of lawsuits.”
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