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interesting article.......

Meet The Doomsday Boom's Rising Star

Tim Ralston is building an empire selling the Crovel, a half-shovel, half-weapon for practical-minded doomsday preppers, spinning the American Dream out of our worst nightmares. In the woods and up the creek with the end times' greatest success story.

Somewhere in Arizona, a man I have known for less than 24 hours is teaching me how to kill a human being with a shovel. Or, should I say, a special customized shovel whose left edge is an axe blade. “Keep it straight at the target, bring it right to this point, and then” — the device, 26 inches long, goes hurling toward a tree stump, the blade spinning end over end — “straight through.”

That’s Tim Ralston, 49, apocalypse salesman of the year. Before he put a shotgun in the trunk of my car, blindfolded me, and took me to this undisclosed location two-plus hours from Phoenix, he invented the tool we’re throwing. This one product has helped him make more than a million dollars in 2012 selling to people who think America — or the entire world — is at risk of collapse.

The Crovel ($109.99) was conceived as a survival tool for the mashup age, a Swiss Army cudgel that could make Switzerland seem fearsome: half-crowbar, half-shovel, all testosterone. But as the device has gotten more profitable, it has also gotten more violent. There are now 11 other tools packed in there: axe and saw blades on opposite sides of the shovelhead, a hammer, “zombie spikes,” the usual. What began as a utility is now a weapon.

This is what Ralston’s customers demand. They don’t just want a shovel with a crowbar, they want a shovel that can kill somebody. He sells to “preppers” — people preparing for The End of the World As We Know It (T.E.O.T.W.A.W.K.I. in prepper parlance). Preppers have two defining characteristics: They’re afraid, and they’re doing something about it.