In this book extract, Steve Braunias describes a visit to the New Zealand home of the German internet entrepreneur who is fighting extradition to the US<\/p>\n
This is the way the world ends: in a candy store. When I asked Kim Dotcom for his address in Queenstown so I could sit with him a while and interview him about his views on how to survive the coming apocalypse, he replied that he would send someone to collect me on a Thursday at 4pm at the Remarkables Sweet Shop on the main street in nearby Arrowtown. I got there early. It was a cold, fresh winter\u2019s day, with black ice and low snow, and birds shivered in the trees above the pretty Arrow River. Tourists filled the candy store. I stood there lurking among the trays of Aniseed Twists and Cola Fizzballs. As soon as I stepped onto the pavement, a big black Mercedes pulled up. It was four o\u2019clock on the dot.<\/p>\n
The rendezvous had come about because Dotcom got in touch after reading a story I wrote for The New Zealand Herald <\/em>about preparing for Doomsday. \u201cThe end of the world as we know it is coming,\u201d he emailed. \u201cWe are close, I think.\u201d I thought so, too. I wrote a year-long series of stories about end days; the subject occupied my mind day and night, I was sleepless, worried, a wreck, but I fancied that I was also practical and methodical, and kept busy by laying down provisions and supplies to protect my family when the world spiralled towards Hell in a fiery and terrifying hat.<\/p>\n