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If that doesn’t kill you the rapid heating of the air can cauterize your airway, cooking you from the inside out.

Then there’s the shrapnel, indiscriminate pieces of rock and metal tearing through your body. As one soldier mildly put it, “All in all it’s something to avoid.”

Then there are our four-legged guardians who protect our service men and women from this horrible end.

Dogs like Mike, a Belgian Malinois, a military K9 pictured here with his handler, Sergeant First Class Matthew Bessler. Mike had recently sniffed out a cache of EFPs and IEDs buried 3 feet under ground outside Baghdad. During “Major Mike’s” two tours in Iraq, he located over 2,000 lbs. of explosives and weapons and saved countless lives in the process. You might well ask how a dog is able to sniff out explosive buried so deep in the earth?

Many of these combat dogs are called MPCs (Multi-Purpose Canines) – Tracking, patrol, and explosives detection. These service dogs lead the way onto the battlefield with their handlers close behind.

Their handlers establish a bond with their animals, a trust and love that few understand. But all pet owners can surely relate to some degree.

Matt Bessler served as a Green Beret with 9 combat deployments spanning 21 years of duty. He was the first and only handler of Mike. Mike’s availability and flexibility were astounding even at an early age. Mike knew who was friend and foe. A dog’s mind can sense danger differently than humans. Mike intrinsically knew how to protect you.

But most of all, Mike was a happy dog.

On Mike’s final tour, he would prove himself to be one of the greatest dogs to ever serve. Matt told me, “We were about to breach a door when Mike indicated. Always trust when a dog indicates. Turns out the door had explosive rigged to it. When we blew that door it triggered a secondary charge blowing another door. You believe that? Mike saved everybody. He wasn’t done either. Mike was the first inside the house and he found this wall, this nothing wall, and indicated. Finally after much deliberation one of our guys just walked up kicked a hole in that wall in revealing a huge cache of enemy weapons.

“I don’t really know what happened that day but, after that raid, Mike stopped indicating. I suppose he was done with war. I was too. I had PTSD and TBI (traumatic brain injury). I figured Mike had seen enough too. Mike was later diagnosed with PTSD as well.”

Before he retired, Mike was promoted to Captain.

PTSD and Mike could control my anxiety. He kept me active, which is the most important thing. I would go on many walks with him. We took care of each other.”

Mike liked playing in the yard, which is what he was doing the day of October 15th, 2015 when Matt was away on a date with his girlfriend.

That’s when a man riding a bicycle with a Judge .410 revolver strapped to his handlebar shot Mike. Mike didn’t die instantly. He limped back to the garage behind Bessler’s house where he laid down, and died.

There were no witnesses. The neighbors were known to have loose dogs and the man who shot Mike was known to not like those dogs. The man claimed he was attacked by Mike but everybody knew better. A later autopsy would reveal Mike was shot from behind, contradicting any claim of an frontal attack. The 59-year old man was unharmed.

Donations poured in from across the country. $10,000 was raised to help Matt pay for a burial with military honors, war dogs are not entitled to funerals or burials with military honors.

For Matt, he has lost a family member. “Mike was my other half” he told a local paper.

Mike was buried on Veterans Day with Matt’s two Bronze Stars and his favorite tennis ball. On that grey and ominous day, Matt promised to create a War Dog Memorial in Wyoming honoring not only Mike, but all service dogs, past present and future.

With the help of the legendary Colonel Buck Wilkerson and Carol Armstrong, who head up the memorial project at the State of Wyoming Veterans Memorial Park, an idea took shape to create a life-sized bronze memorial honoring all war dogs, one of the few that will be accessible to the public (many are on military bases and civilian access is limited).

Vietnam veteran painter and sculptor, John Phelps said, “It is my honor to create this bronze, one of the few such statures in the United States and the first of its kind in Wyoming. It will honor all service dogs but it is inspired, in image and likeness, by Mike.”

Paving stones will be placed at the base of the stature to memorialize all service dogs who gave the last full measure fighting for our freedom.

Matt standing in the plot of land where the memorial will be constructed.

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Starting with the stripes, he put down a little painters tape.

Some candy apple red to splash on top of the white.

Some coin shaped hubcaps.

The proud family surveying their work.

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In the official words from the company, “this is the place you will want to be when the SHTF” (Sh*t Hits the Fan).

Vivos is developing a community that will be comprised of 575 private bunkers. Each one of those bunkers made of hardened concrete and steel is capable of withstanding a 500,000-lb. blast.

The community is located in the Black Hills of South Dakota. It was originally built in 1942 and operated by the Army Corps of Engineers until 1967 as a place to store bombs and munitions during the Cold War.

That was then, welcome to 2017 where the Vivos Group has purchased the 18-square mile complex and renamed it “xPoint”.

You can get a 99-year lease on a single bunker for an upfront payment of $25,000 with a mere $1,000 yearly payment for community renovation costs.
Each nuclear shelter comes “as-is” but there are no rules as to how you’d like to outfit the inside.

The units all measure at a width of 26.5 feet with a 13 foot tall ceiling. If you get in early, the larger units span a length of 80-feet. For the later buyers, they will get the smaller units that only span 60-feet.

Once you become an owner the “members only” gate will open where Vivos xPoint will provide 24/7 onsite security from Military trained guards.

Vivos suggests some obvious additional build-outs such as: plumbing, electrical, power generation, air filtration and exhaust. No worries because they can do all of these basics build outs for an extra $25 thousand bucks.

In addition, you will be provided with a full-time staff to attend to your maintenance needs.

The company has brought in many interior design firms to make these bunkers feel like “home”.

For example, this rendering above shows how LED screens could function as “windows”.

The site has future plans to build the following:

-General Store
-Members-only Restaurant & Bar
-a Community Theater
-Hot Tub Spa and Gym
-a Medical Clinic
-Hydroponic Gardens
-a Chapel
-Shooting Ranges
-a Vivos Equipment/Construction Supply Depot with a Woodworking Shop
-and multiple Horse Stables

At this point, all of the units are available. However this March of 2017, after the snow melts in South Dakota, Vivos will begin hosting tours of the complex with plans for tenants to start moving in as early as this up-coming summer.

Let’s not forget that this is a community. As such, they even have plans to build school classrooms for the children.

This all sounds good except for one little question: how the f*** does one plan to get from their home in Beverly Hills to a locked down community in the Black Hills of South Dakota…before the big-one goes off?

Yeah rich people, I got ya there? Nope.
Aside from having over a 100 miles of onsite private roads for quick access to each of the bunkers; the community has access to both a nearby municipal airport and multiple private runways.

If all goes as plans, xPoint will be the “largest survival shelter community on Earth”.

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However, if playgrounds like this were situated near us, it might’ve been a different story.

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Jay really knows and loves his cars. As of 2014, his collection totalled 130 cars and 93 motorcycles. As you can guess, they’re all both rare and real expensive.

Rezvani is a small American company that has created a unique super car called the “Beast”.

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Huge flocks of up to 50,000 starlings form The Black Sun form in areas of the UK right before sundown in mid-winter. They’re also called murmurations.

Running through the island of Mindanao in the Philippines, the Enchanted River is a beautiful natural mystery. Why? Because no one really knows where it comes from.

Tanzania’s Lake Natron is a salt lake fed by mineral-rich hot springs that is the only regular breeding area in East Africa for the 2.5 million flamingos who live there.

Tidal bores on the Amazon in Brazil and the Severn in England are a phenomenon in which the leading edge of the incoming tide forms a wave of water that travels up a river against the flow.

Lenticular clouds are stationary lens-shaped clouds that form in the troposphere, and because of their shape have been offered as an explanation for UFO sightings.

Frost flowers are ice crystals commonly found growing on young sea ice and thin lake ice in reaaaally cold and calm conditions, like -7 degrees Fahrenheit.

A little over 30 miles in diameter, the Richat Structure, also known as the Eye of Africa, is a circular geological formation located in the middle of the Sahara Desert. No one really knows how the shape came to be, but there are several theories that range from an asteroid impact to natural erosion.

The Catatumbo Lightning occurs 140-160 nights a year, 10 hours per night and up to 280 times an hour.

Underwater crop circles in the oceans off the coast of Japan may look like they came from aliens, but they’re actually created by a male pufferfish when he tries to woo a female.

Undulatus asperatus, aka “roughened or agitated waves” has been proposed as a separate cloud classification by the founder of the Cloud Appreciation Society. It would be the first new type of cloud recognized since 1951.

The Flowering Desert occurs in the Atacama Desert, Chile when rainfall is unusually high. Normally the region gets less than 12 mm of rain each year.

Circumhorizontal arcs (also called fired rainbows) occur when an ice halo is formed by plate-shaped ice crystals in high level cirrus clouds.

In Death Valley, USA, Sailing stones are a geological phenomenon where rocks move and inscribe long tracks along a smooth valley floor without human or animal intervention.

There are several naturally occurring flames around the world, most of which are kept lit by natural gases. However, that’s not the case for Eternal Flames Falls in Chestnut Ridge Park, New York. The rocks surrounding the flame don’t produce any gas, so scientists are unsure how it continues to burn. The fire is said to have been lit by Native Americans THOUSANDS of years ago.

Namibia’s mysterious Fairy Circles are one of nature’s greatest mysteries, and local legend says they are the footsteps of the gods.

40,000 interlocking basalt columns in Northern Ireland make up the Giant’s Causeway, the result of an ancient volcanic eruption.

The Great Blue Hole off the coast of Belize is almost 1,000 feet across and over 400 feet deep.

Spherical boulders in New Zealand are exhumed from the mudstone enclosing them by coastal erosion.

Each year an estimated 43 million land crabs migrate to lay their eggs in the ocean. Authorities close most of the island’s roads during this time, which takes at least a week.

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The interior upholstery took over 800 hours to design.

DS E-Tense powers 9 speakers for your audio pleasure.

It is tough to gage the total range of miles one recharged outing will last but it is estimated from 190-225 miles but that is dependent on how many times you put the peddle to the metal.

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Except that isn’t really the the actress. She isn’t really in costume, and that isn’t really the set.

In fact it is the work of an extremely well done 3D model created by artist Per Haagensen.

As a matter of fact no part of these promotional photos included actress Anne Hathaway. Only a model made of her likeness using Zbrush and Lightwave and the backgrounds created in photoshop.

Think about this the next time you see some behind the scenes photos from Entertainment Weekly.

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