In his youth, Allen Ungerer had two close calls with death. At age twelve he contracted necrotizing fasciitis in his right leg. His shin is a twig, but the infection stopped and he didn’t have his leg amputated. Then in college he had a head-on collision on his motorcycle and fractured his C5 vertebrae. He escaped paralysis but not persistent pain.

After rehab, Allen lived a conventional life. He followed his father’s path as an insurance broker in Delaware. “It’s very lucrative for the amount of work involved.” He married a stay-at-home wife, had two daughters, and invested his renewal commissions in an annuity. A few years ago, when his children were grown, he divorced his wife. At age 47, he receives $1000 a week from the annuity, though he spends only a fraction of that amount. Allen lives a frugal life.

Disentangled from his family, Allen spent ten months in 2012 living among the homeless in a tent along the riverbed of Ventura, CA. Since then he’s been seeking a place to homestead. “I want to be untraceable, untrackable. Right now I have that annuity that I have to draw down. When I get self-sufficient I will be able to disappear.”

Allen landed in Colorado a year ago, and has stayed, in large part, because it’s so easy to get cannabis. “I used to take six prescriptions. Now, I mange my pain through various mixes I grind myself. “ Allen rents a small house in Pueblo where he grows his six legally allowed marijuana plants indoors and is planning a sizable back yard garden. Allen stopped driving in 2013; he has a motor-assist bike to get around town. “I have everything I need within four blocks: a butcher, a 7-11, an ice cream store, a Family Dollar.”

Allen has a complex belief system that he says is based in the Good Book. “The One World movement is dangerous. Too much power concentrated in one person. We’ll unify money first, then government. But it will never happen. I’m a Bible believer. I sit back and watch. 2068 is the date of the end of the earth as we know it. We will turn into our spiritual bodies. Jesus will return before the last person born during the founding of Israel (1948) dies. Before that, aliens will descend and we will accept them as our god. That’s when the End Times will begin.”

How will we live tomorrow?

“For me, its simple: by the grace of God. That’s how I live every day. There were three times in my life when I should have been dead but a guardian angel intervened and here I am.”