Endangered Billionaires

Gone are the innocent times of open and joyous enjoyment of your wealth, of ego-boosting, happy and colorful ostentatiousness. Billionaires are living in fear now of the envious, thieving and greedy criminal hoi polloi.

Imagine you have a huge stash of money, so huge that you really can’t say how much you are ‘worth.’ In fact the size of your wealth is indirectly indicated by the no-man’s land between the minimum and the maximum of the estimation bracket. We have all seen such estimates: so-and-so is worth anywhere between 90 and 120 billion. Think of the size of the ditch in that bracket: 30 billion. You, your family, your town, perhaps your state could fall into it and not be seen for quite a while, busily patching the holes in your budgets and even splurging on food.

If someone asks me how much I am worth I would probably hesitate, not being sure if I should include the approximate resale value of my 6-year-old car. Small ditch in my bracket.

Now, be fair and try hard to empathize: imagine you are this rich and instead of being able to flaunt it like in the good, old days, all you can do is hint at it it behind closed doors to those in the same bracket with you.

It is the indignity of a raincoat flasher!

But it gets worse. Now you have to worry every time you step out of the compound or just want to go for a bit of cruising in your car. You may be spotted, pursued, carjacked, attacked, robbed.

No more. The solution has been found: up-armored cars, custom made by Texcalibur Armor in Houston, Tx, for “diplomats, SWAT teams, government contractors, business executives, celebrities and high-net-worth individuals.”

The idea behind the process is to take an SUV or another car, strip it apart, and add bullet-resistant steel, composite material and ballistic glass,” said Scott Newman of Texcalibur Armor. “The end game is to put the vehicle back together so it’s discreet and nobody knows it’s armored.”

 Major features include:

1. Reinforced body, doors, panels, and a rear door armored with ballistic 1/4-in.
2. AR500 steel able to repel blasts from the standard 7.62 x 51mm M-80 NATO rounds.
3. Electrically charged door handles that deliver a dose of incapacitating 160 volts of electricity into the uninvited hands.
4. The roof is covered with a 1/4-in. rigid Kevlar, and the flooring protected by a Kevlar bomb blanket.
5. You are safe even from the simultaneous explosion of two DM-51 German ordinance hand grenades.
6. If you are pursued, you can engage the smoke-screen dispenser, dispensing a large cloud of white smoke behind you
7. Or you may opt to use the tack in the rear bumper, releasing 2-inch-long tacks to puncture the tires of the cars pursuing you.

These cars are not mass-produced, naturally; only 90 are made each year. It is a niche market. It is a sad world we live in, one in which people who diligently amassed billions of dollars live in fear of their miserable, greedy inferiors.

© 2012

Posted by Ariadna Theokopoulos on June 15, 2012. Filed under Money. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.