Billionaire Bunkers: Forbes Looks Inside the World’s Largest Planned Doomsday Escape

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Photo Credit: Forbes For the very first time, a modern day Noah’s Ark has opened its doors for an exclusive inside look offering up plans for the ultimate Billionaire bunker and doomsday escape.

Vivos founder and CEO Robert Vicino announced Vivos Europa One which will be an invitation only, five star, underground survival complex, similar to an underground cruise ship for the elite. Each family will be provided a private 2,500 square foot of floor area, capable of two story improvements for a total of 5,000 square feet of private living quarters. With fit and finish comparable to a mega-yacht, each member family will hire their own architect and contractor to build out their living quarters to the custom standard they desire.

The expansive shelter is located in Germany and is one of the most fortified and massive underground survival shelters on Earth. Originally built by the Soviets during the Cold War, this shelter was a fortress for military equipment and munitions. After the DDR was merged with Germany, the German government inherited this relic and intended to use it for the same purpose of weapons storage. However, due to a law prohibiting the storage of ammunition near a major highway, the German Government soon realized they could not continue with their plans and decided to auction this 76 acre complex. A wealthy investor purchased the entire property, along with all of its improvements, both above and below ground. Vicino says “We are proud to bring this epic project forward in these increasingly dangerous times.”

Photo Credit: Forbes Photo Credit: Forbes

The hardened facility is capable of withstanding a substantial close range nuclear blast, a direct airplane crash, biological and chemical agents, shock waves, earthquakes, tsunami, electro-magnetic pulses, and virtually any armed attack.

The complex includes over 21,108 square meters (227,904 square feet) of secured, blast proof living areas; and, an additional 4,079 square meters (43,906 square feet) of above-ground office and warehouse buildings, including a train servicing depot. The typical chamber area is 5 meters wide (16.40 feet), by 6 meters tall (19.68 feet) and 85 meters (278.87 feet) long. Collectively there are over 5 kilometers (3.1 miles) of continuous tunnel chambers (equivalent to 71 Boeing 747’s fuselages stretched end to end). All shelter areas are located behind 3 separate nuclear blast and radiation proof vehicle entrances, and a number of other passages for access by people only. Each of the three main tunnel entrances includes an outer security door system, followed by a 40 ton hydraulic truck access door with hardened steel rods which expand into the surrounding encasement, and a second set of massive steel doors providing an airtight seal shut, protecting against chemical, biological and gas intrusion. The underground main traffic corridors are large enough to allow mechanical transportation of heavy equipment to almost any point within the complex. (Read more from “Billionaire Bunkers: A Look Inside the World’s Largest Planned Doomsday Escape” HERE)

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Facebook Will Now Take Your Silent Lurking Into Account for News Feed Rankings

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By now, most people know that their comments, likes, clicks, and shares on Facebook affect what they ultimately see on the social network. But Facebook revealed today that it has tweaked its news feed algorithm to also take into account the time people spend on posts, even if they don’t take any actions. That’s right, Facebook knows when you’re lurking . . .

But the modification isn’t as simple as counting the number of seconds people spend on posts. Those with slower internet connections, for instance, are likely to spend more time on stories due to the loading time. So Facebook will look at how much time a post spends on a user’s screen relative to other posts presented in the user’s news feed. Based on that, it will surface similar stories higher up in the feed. (A spokesperson for the company tells [this reporter] that Facebook is able to tell if a user is actively looking at the social network on a computer, or if the site is open in a tab or window in the background.) (Read more from “Facebook Will Now Take Your Silent Lurking Into Account for News Feed Rankings” HERE)

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Woman Arrested for Assaulting Her Boyfriend… With a Hamburger

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During an argument over infidelity, a Florida woman threw a hamburger at her boyfriend, striking him in the eye and landing her in jail.

According to cops, Rykihia Moore and Mario Thornton were bickering Saturday evening over Moore reportedly “being unfaithful.”

In the midst of the verbal beef inside a Clearwater home, the 27-year-old Moore “took a hamburger” and threw it at Thornton, her beau of 12 months. The burger, a criminal complaint alleges, struck Thornton in the eye. (Read more from “Woman Arrested for Assaulting Her Boyfriend… With a Hamburger” HERE)

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Secretive In-N-Out Billionaire Owner Committed to Christian Faith; Values Extend to Entire Burger Chain

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Photo Credit: Gospel Herald California-based burger chain In-N-Out is best known for its tasty burgers, fries and shakes, all of which have gathered a cult following among fans. The billionaire owner of the burger dynasty, 33-year-old Lynsi Snyder, also happens to be a practicing, Bible-believing Christian.

According to Ryan Bradley of Grub Street, Snyder maintains a low profile and rarely does interviews, citing her family’s safety and privacy; she has previously been targeted for kidnapping. He tried to get in touch with Snyder through Phyllis Cudworth, the marketing coordinator at In-N-Out . . .

Bradley noted that the sense of privacy surrounding the owner extended across the In-N-Out chain. He asked a woman who worked at the Baldwin Park location on what Snyder was like.

“The Snyders are people of humility and faith, she tells me, then requests that I don’t ask any more questions because she could get in trouble,” Bradley wrote.

Bradley observed that In-N-Out’s packaging contained Bible verses. His milkshake cup made a reference to Proverbs 3:5, which says “Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.” (Read more from “Secretive In-N-Out Billionaire Owner Committed to Christian Faith; Values Extend to Entire Burger Chain” HERE)

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Millions of Noisy, Rare Cicadas Emerge in Kansas After 17 Years [+video]

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Millions of cicadas have emerged from the ground in central Kansas, capping off a 17-year lifespan spent, in large part, burrowed in the dirt.

The tiny, red-eyed insects spend the better part of two decades below ground – feeding on tree roots for nutrition and undergoing five phases of development – before returning to the surface, where they make their presence known, loudly, much to the chagrin of nearby humans . . .

The people to whom he was referring are neighbors of these noisy critters. In neighborhoods across central and eastern Kansas, residents have endured weeks of the incessant noise. Fortunately for them, the end is near: Cicadas spend only a few weeks above ground before perishing.

As the cicadas emerge, the male population sings a loud, high-pitched song to attract female mates. As a new generation of cicadas are laid in the twigs of trees, the adults decompose, emitting a foul odor to accompany the mating call. A lethal combination, quite literally.

Between their extraordinarily long lifespan and the crescendo with which that life comes to an end, cicadas are of immense interest to scientists, though little is definitively known about them. “From a scientific standpoint, they’re truly fascinating,” Griffin, who directs the John C. Pair Horticultural Center in Wichita, said. (Read more from “Millions of Noisy, Rare Cicadas Emerge in Kansas After 17 Years” HERE)

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Two New Studies: Cat Parasite Linked to Mental Illnesses

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Coming into close contact with cats can spread a parasite called Toxoplasma gondii (T. gondii) – also dubbed the “cat poop parasite” – which are linked to schizophrenia and other mental disorders that affect humans.

The cat-carried parasite is the most common in developed countries and can infect any warm-blooded species, according to the Schizophrenia Bulletin. Although most humans don’t suffer any symptoms from the widespread parasite, it can cause the illness T. gondii, which is linked to weeks of flu-like symptoms, blindness and even death, CBS News reports.

Two new studies have now linked the T. gondii parasite to increased rates of mental illness in cat owners who may have had increased exposure to parasitic infection.

“Cat ownership in childhood has now been reported in three studies to be significantly more common in families in which the child is later diagnosed with schizophrenia or another serious mental illness,” write study authors E. Fuller Torrey of the Stanley Medical Research Institute and Dr. Robert H. Yolken of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

The researchers compared two previous studies that linked childhood cat ownership and the development of schizophrenia later in life from a 1982 mental health survey. A second study by A.L. Sutterland from the Department of Psychiatry at the Academic Medical Centre in Amsterdam reviewed 50 published studies to a T. gondii infection being tied to mental disorders. (Read more from “Study: Cat Parasite Linked to Mental Illnesses” HERE)

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Google Director: Humans Will Be Hybrids by 2030

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Photo Credit: CNN Money In the future, humans are going to be artificially intelligent.

That’s the prediction of Ray Kurzweil, director of engineering at Google (GOOGL, Tech30), who spoke Wednesday at the Exponential Finance conference in New York.

Kurzweil predicts that humans will become hybrids in the 2030s. That means our brains will be able to connect directly to the cloud, where there will be thousands of computers, and those computers will augment our existing intelligence. He said the brain will connect via nanobots — tiny robots made from DNA strands . . .

Kurzweil, who is known as one the world’s leading inventors, has predicted what the future will look like before. In the ’90s, he made 147 predictions for 2009. In 2010, he reviewed his predictions, 86% of which were correct. He gave himself a “B” grade . . .

For those concerned with artificial intelligence taking over the world, Kurzweil said we have a moral imperative to keep developing the technology while controlling for potential dangers. (Read more from “Ray Kurzweil: Humans Will Be Hybrids by 2030” HERE)

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This Blood Test Can Tell You Every Virus You’ve Ever Had

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Researchers have developed a DNA-based blood test that can determine a person’s viral history, a development they hope could lead to early detection of conditions, such as hepatitis C, and eventually help explain what triggers certain autoimmune diseases and cancers.

The new test, known as VirScan, works by screening the blood for antibodies against any of the 206 species of viruses known to infect humans, according to a study published Thursday in the journal Science. The immune system, which churns out specific antibodies when it encounters a virus, can continue to produce those antibodies decades after an infection subsides. VirScan detects those antibodies and uses them as a window in time to create a blueprint of nearly every virus an individual has encountered. It’s a dramatic alternative to existing diagnostic tools, which test only for a single suspected virus.

“The approach is clever and a technological tour de force,” said Ian Lipkin, a professor of epidemiology and director of the Center for Infection and Immunity at Columbia University, who was not involved in the creation of VirScan. “It has the potential to reveal viruses people have encountered recently or many years earlier … Thus, this is a powerful new research tool.”

Scientists on Thursday reported intriguing findings from their initial tests of 569 people they screened using VirScan in the United States, South Africa, Thailand and Peru. They found that the average person has been exposed to 10 of the 206 different species of known viruses — though some people showed exposure to more than double that number.

“Many of those [people] have probably been infected with many different strains of the same virus,” said Stephen Elledge, a professor of genetics and medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, who led the development of VirScan. “You could be infected with many strains of rhinovirus over the course of your life, for instance, and it would show up as one hit.” (Read more from “This Blood Test Can Tell You Every Virus You’ve Ever Had” HERE)

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Watch: Ted Cruz Is Sure Tom Brady Was Framed, and He’s Clear About Who Did It!

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The 2016 candidate for the Republican presidential nomination told a crowd gathered at the home of Republican Massachusetts state Rep. Jim Lyons that he knows who is responsible for deflating the footballs of the Super Bowl champion New England Patriots’ and that quarterback Tom Brady was framed.

The culprit?

None other than Democrat presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton.

“Why do you think she deleted her emails?” he rhetorically asked the cheering crowd.

(Read more from “Ted Cruz Is Sure Tom Brady Was Framed, and He’s Clear About Who Did It!” HERE)

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Psychiatrist: Transgender Is a Mental Disorder; Sex Change Biologically Impossible

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Dr. Paul R. McHugh, the former psychiatrist-in-chief for Johns Hopkins Hospital and its current Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry, said that transgenderism is a “mental disorder” that merits treatment, that sex change is “biologically impossible,” and that people who promote sexual reassignment surgery are collaborating with and promoting a mental disorder.

Dr. McHugh, the author of six books and at least 125 peer-reviewed medical articles, made his remarks in a recent commentary in the Wall Street Journal, where he explained that transgender surgery is not the solution for people who suffer a “disorder of ‘assumption’” – the notion that their maleness or femaleness is different than what nature assigned to them biologically.

He also reported on a new study showing that the suicide rate among transgendered people who had reassignment surgery is 20 times higher than the suicide rate among non-transgender people. Dr. McHugh further noted studies from Vanderbilt University and London’s Portman Clinic of children who had expressed transgender feelings but for whom, over time, 70%-80% “spontaneously lost those feelings.”

While the Obama administration, Hollywood, and major media such as Time magazine promote transgenderism as normal, said Dr. McHugh, these “policy makers and the media are doing no favors either to the public or the transgendered by treating their confusions as a right in need of defending rather than as a mental disorder that deserves understanding, treatment and prevention.”

“This intensely felt sense of being transgendered constitutes a mental disorder in two respects. The first is that the idea of sex misalignment is simply mistaken – it does not correspond with physical reality. The second is that it can lead to grim psychological outcomes.” (Read more from “Psychiatrist: Transgender Is Mental Disorder; Sex Change Biologically Impossible” HERE)

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