Josh Duhamel is casually preparing a compound for the end of the world: 'It keeps my lizard brain active'

Josh Duhamel: actor, philanthropist, and … doomsday prepper?

The answer, wildly enough, is yes. The Buddy Games: Spring Awakening star dished to Inverse about how he's been slowly developing a self-supported, remote compound that he believes could potentially survive the apocalypse should the world ever descend into fiery chaos.

"I've become a bit of a doomsday prepper, I guess," he told the outlet. "So I'm learning how to hunt. I have wells. We have water. We have fuel. I'm building something so if things do go south, I have a place to take my family. And I believe that we could live off the land out there. I'm not very good at it yet, but I'm getting there."

Earlier, Duhamel explained that his cabin quest all began with "with one little cabin in the woods with no electricity and no water" readily available to drink. "We would go and we didn't wanna stay for more than a day or two," he recalled. "You could tell the mice had overrun it. It was disgusting."

Things changed when the property next door went up for sale. "I bought it for like nothing; this beautiful little idyllic cabin on the water," he said. "Suddenly I had 54 acres out there. So I had two cabins, one with no electricity or water. They both have wells and electricity now, but they're both really small."

These "small" lodgings are way more fancy than your typical old cabin. Duhamel noted that they're both equipped with Starlink internet, televisions, and "actual plumbing with actual flushing toilets." However, he added that he still keeps two outhouses on the property "just for nostalgic reasons."

He's similarly cultivated the land around the property and is in the process of growing crops. "We started with clover and chicory and stuff, mostly just to feed the deer," Duhamel said. "It was my first time ever tilling, you know, clearing a space of land and tilling it and seeding it. This year I'm gonna grow pumpkins and corn."

The chicory and clover is part of a long-running plan for Duhamel to be able to hunt deer should he and his family need to live off the land by any means necessary. He said, "I'm not a hunter by any means, but I have this crazy fixation on what happens if s--- hits the fan in LA and I have to take my family out there and live off the land."

Duhamel added, "It keeps my lizard brain active."

The Transformer actor said the idea for his compound all fell into place after learning about a community where people were only allowed to stay if they provided pivotal survival skills for the group. He also credited reading James Wesley Rawles' 2020 book Patriots: Surviving the Coming Collapse, which he said "freaked me out a little bit."

"I'm not saying I'm that crazy about it, but it is a comforting feeling knowing that I could survive out there," he said. "I'm working on those skills. I wouldn't call myself an expert or a survivalist by any means, but I'm getting better at it."

Judging by his tractor mastery and ax-throwing skills, not to mention this outrageously large stack of logs, it looks like Duhamel's off to a good start.

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