My Brother Ruined Me,Then the Frozen Apocalypse Began

Ever since I won that $50 million lottery jackpot, everything changed.

My best friend, Mark, started avoiding me out of nowhere.

We barely talked anymore, and even when we ran into each other, he wouldn't say a word.

I was sick of the weird silent treatment, so I went straight to the bar we always used to hang out at and found him there.

"Mark, what the hell is going on?" I asked, barely holding back my anger. "What did I do to piss you off? If I did something, just say it."

Mark looked startled.

"I'm sorry, man," he said. "I know I've been acting like an asshole and shutting you out, but I didn't know how to tell you. I... I found out something huge. Something bad enough to get all of us killed."

I frowned. "What are you talking about?"

He glanced around nervously, then leaned in and lowered his voice.

"The deep freeze apocalypse is coming in two weeks. If we don't start stockpiling supplies right now, we're all going to die in two weeks."

"A deep freeze apocalypse?" I stared at him. "Have you been watching too many disaster movies?"

"Oh God, that's exactly why I couldn't tell you," Mark said, his eyes turning red. "I knew you'd think I was full of shit. But I can't just sit back and watch you die. You're my brother. That's why I decided to tell you."

Then he described what it would look like when it hit.

First, nonstop blizzards and hurricane-force winds. Then hail. Temperatures dropping to negative 110 degrees. People freezing to death in their homes because they didn't have enough supplies.

The fear in his voice and on his face looked real.

We'd known each other for years, and I knew Mark wasn't the kind of guy who joked around like this.

"Okay." I took a deep breath and made up my mind. "I believe you."

Mark let out a long breath, his voice almost breaking. "Thank you for trusting me, man. Listen to me—your money is your biggest weapon right now, but it still won't be enough. Borrow whatever you can. Spend everything if you have to. Buy supplies. Food, fuel, cold-weather gear—as much as possible. And don't tell anyone. If word gets out, the riots will kill you before the snowstorm does."

The next morning, I quit my job and drove back to my hometown.

If the apocalypse was really coming, there was nowhere safer than home.

When I got back, my parents were sitting on the couch watching the news.

"Mom, Dad, we need to talk," I said without wasting time.

At first, they thought I'd lost my mind. They even wondered if something had happened to me.

But after hours of pleading, they finally gave in.

"All right," my father said with a sigh. "You're our son. Of course we trust you."

He agreed to put all of the family's savings on the table.

Then we got busy buying supplies and reinforcing the house.

I hired the best private bunker contractor I could find and told him I wanted the place turned into a fortress.

The workers added one-foot-thick reinforced concrete outer walls and installed top-grade insulation.

The material was usually used for spacecraft. It could keep out temperatures as low as negative 100 degrees and offered blast protection too.

The backyard was also transformed into a massive underground cellar and climate-controlled storage space. Its walls were reinforced to bunker standards and connected directly to the house through a blast door.

My father and I split up and hit suppliers in different cities, buying everything we could get our hands on.

I ordered 20,000 gallons of diesel, 5,000 gallons of gasoline, bought out the inventory of three major lumber mills nearby, and purchased fifty tons of smokeless coal.

My father, meanwhile, sourced seven industrial-grade silent diesel generators from Texas, along with deep-cycle battery banks with a total capacity of 500,000 watt-hours.

With fuel and heating covered, we moved on to clothes and bedding.

Through some connections, my father got hold of two hundred sets of military cold-weather gear and fifty goose-down sleeping bags rated for temperatures as low as negative 75 degrees Fahrenheit.

Wool thermal underwear, snow boots, boxes of wool blankets, heated anti-freeze gloves, military hand warmers with extra-high heat output—I loaded every single category onto trucks by the thousand.

By the end of that summer, while everyone else was still drinking ice-cold beer and complaining about the heat, truckload after truckload of supplies had filled my home.