Fastest way for an invincible young immortal to make $1 million USD?

Question

So, I gave a $100 bill to a homeless person a few months ago who gave me "God's blessings" in return. Apparently, that conveyed immortality and invincibility upon me as I no longer age (I think) and cannot be injured. Think Superman-style iron skin, except I haven't found my kryptonite. I also don't have super-strength or flight. I haven’t told many people yet, because I haven’t decided how to approach this, and the few people I’ve told who tried to go to the media without me were rejected as crazy.

Faced with an eternity of boredom, I'd like to become fabulously wealthy. Obviously, I could do this by investing in funds and start-up companies, but I only have ~$20,000 in my bank account and would like to earn my first million dollars as quickly as possible.

One of my friends suggested selling "God's blessings" but I don't seem to be able to pass on my powers, and I haven't been able to find the same mysterious person since to ask them about it. I'm okay with being famous if it helps me make a lot of money really fast, but I'm honestly a bit boring - I haven't done much with my life that would make people want to listen to advice I have to give. The few people within the medical community I’ve already told interested (and skeptical) of course, but they’re worries that without being able to operate on me or replicate my initial conditions, they'd be limited to non-invasive scans such as MRIs or EKGs and the preliminary scans we tried didn’t show any significant differences. I'm not especially interested in being perfectly moral, having escaped the "final judgement" problem, but I would prefer that the world doesn't hate me.

How can I capitalize on my immortal invincibility to make $1 million USD as quickly as possible?

EDIT: For future answers (and any previous answerers who see this and feel like adding it) please provide estimates as to how long you expect your method to take. As of right now it’s very difficult for me to decide which of these is actually fastest.

Shoutout to the Sandbox for helping me develop this question!

Answer 1

Until recently you could have applied for James Randi's prize, which promised a million dollars for anyone who could prove paranormal powers. Nobody won, and it was withdrawn in 2015. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Million_Dollar_Paranormal_Challenge

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Edit: In the comments, Tom K. correctly points out that "Applications for any challenges that might cause serious injury or death were not accepted." This reduces your options for a spectacular demonstration, but minor injuries were apparently acceptable. You could have demonstrated resistance to a pin or blood-sampling needle, and that would probably have won you the prize. It's worth noting that they nearly tested someone who claimed to be able to subsist without food, but were unable to agree on a test; this might be a suitable (if tedious) test for you, if you don't like needles.

In at least one example, a lawyer was present at the test with a check ready to give out, so this should be a quick method (I don't know how long it would take to agree a test protocol). Building your time machine to go back to 2015 may take a little longer, though ;-).

Answer 2

This is not necessarily the fastest approach, but since you mentioned the concern is the immortal getting bored, I figured some excitement might offset the fact that it's a bit slower.

MMA fights.

If I look at Connor McGregor's career earnings, it took him about 3 years to earn a million dollar purse. Obviously you won't fight quite as well as McGregor, but your iron skin might make up for it. All you need to do is play the part (work the crowds properly), and they'll pave the way for you.

This also has the added advantage of being a series of fights, rather than a steady job. A real MMA fighter has to spend an enormous amount of time training, but if all you need is your iron skin, you may be able to do other things while you're waiting. You could even take a gamble, and try to make your million some other way, while the MMA fights provide a sure win over a few years.

Answer 3

I imagine you can do some pretty awesome magic tricks with immortality. My recommendation would be to start figuring out some magic tricks. You'll do this and eventually get recognized as a great magician. With talent shows like "America's Got Talent" and such, you'd be able to get an audience quite easily to perform your trick.

Since it's a magic trick, people will assume they're being fooled by an illusion some how, but no one will know how to pull off your tricks and that will make you one of the best magicians of all time.

Get a show in Vegas and suddenly you're rich and famous.

List of Invincible Tricks:

• Bending a sharp blade on your body by pushing the sharp end into yourself.
• Shooting yourself in the chest and then displaying the bullet to the audience.
• Sitting underwater for extended periods of time.
• Pushing objects into your eye to bend them.
• Surviving a guillotine by having it fall on your neck and crumple.
• Anything freaky that most human bodies can't do.
• I mean seriously you can basically just go on stage and find creative ways to try and kill yourself.

All of these could be prefaced by showing how the blade / bullet is legit by shooting or slicing a watermelon or something similar. Really get the crazy theatrics and tricks going.

Answer 4

Become the new Evel Knievel

Setup some ridiculous stunt, so audaciously deleterious that the world cannot help but watch. Fired from a cannon, across the English Channel, into a big net. Wing Suit onto a Ski Jump, no parachute.

Something nuts. And, miss BADLY, off by a mile. Huge spectacle and everyone gets what they secretly want, to see you get pulverized. Your crumpled body whisked off to a secure medical facility. Wait a barely plausible # of months, then have a full, miraculous, recovery.

You're now a household name. Publicize your next insane stunt. Sell sponsorships. BAM! One Million Biscuits!

Note: You have to keep your immortality secret for this to work! If everyone knows that you didn't actually get hurt. Well, what's the fun in that?

Answer 5

Hunt down someone on the FBI or Interpol's most wanted lists. You're invincible, so you don't need to take any precautions. Further, your prey won't know that you're invincible and likely won't really be prepared to deal with a single person who is basically an action movie hero.

All of these fugitives have huge bounties on their heads, Osama Bin Laden's for instance got up to $20 million at one point. So all you need to do is catch or kill just one of these people.

Answer 6

Since your invincibility and likely immortality stems from the God's blessings thing, I would bank on that, become an evangelist And cash in on the chance of one day your followers may too be granted Gods Blessings ' etc. I'm sure you'll figure out the rest.

Answer 7

The only thing you seem to be able to rely upon is your fame. If you could have a million before your blessing you probably would have gotten it. So the only thing different is immortality and that some people know about it.

Now I would have kept that immortality veeeeery quiet. I'm sure that between the genuinely interested you would find your share of extremists who see in you a grand saviour and will try to force you to do their will, or people who would think you an embodiment of Evil in need of a few threats and mishaps, if necessary to any friends and family. And lets not forget that any country who wants to get rid of that nasty thing of writing condoleances to the families of their dead soldiers would be very interested in seeing what makes you tick, for the greater good you know as your one immortal life cant weigh up against all the lives it will save and the patriotism right...?

Small edit: and with the above I wanted to illustrate that you could earn money with it but it would also have both personal risks and require large amounts of money for security.

So if I were the immortal, I would be more paranoid than I already am and keep it as quiet as I can, just work as I've always done and use that lenghty lifespan to save up enough money. I would probably move to a country with a nice social structure (Norway or Sweden are good candidates I believe?) and lots of understanding of its people as someone (taxes most likely) is going to notice when you've passed the 100 years line while still looking young enough and I am going to want to talk to them about keeping it quiet without the aforementioned greater good happening to me. Just let me be a good citizen and perhaps cooperate with only a few choice tests for a fee thank you very much.

Only other option to keep quiet would be trying to pass yourself off as a non-existant child of yours or constantly move somewhere else and falsify your identity. But you would need to redo your falsifying time and again and in all likelyhood get discovered at some point anyway.

Answer 8

You're immortal. Any money you make needs to be under the radar. The last thing you want is your immortality to be known unless you actually want to be a rat in a government laboratory.

I'm not sure why you want to make money really fast because time is the best way to make money and one thing immortals have plenty of is time.

Now assuming you have some reason to try and rush things, you need a dangerous job. Now depending on your morals, you can be a hit man for a Mexican cartel, a mercenary, firefighter for someone like Red Adair specializing in oil fires and other dangerous fires or finally just a stuntman.

The more dangerous a job is, the more it pays and you can write off your survival off as pure luck.

Answer 9

I doubt if the immortal person would find life boring if they loved any friends or relatives. Instead their life would be a frantic search for a way to make their friends and relatives also immortal - maybe everyone else in the world if they are altruistic enough - until it succeeds or all their friends and relatives die of old age, etc.

And if that search for giving immortality to their friends and relatives fails, the life of the immortal character may become like that of Flint in the episode "Requiem for Methuselah".

FLINT: And to conceal it. To live some portion of a life, to pretend to age and then move on before my nature was suspected.

I have married a hundred times, Captain. Selected, loved, cherished. Caressed a smoothness, inhaled a brief fragrance. Then age, death, the taste of dust. Do you understand?

http://www.chakoteya.net/StarTrek/76.htm1

I am assuming that Dubukay's immortal character is a man and not a woman or a child who had a $ 100.00 bill in their pocket.

1) If the immortal man is willing to tell the world about his new status.

What about selling some of "your" blood to medical researchers to study in hope that "your" blood transmits some of "your" immortality? How about selling small tissue samples?

I myself have had several small bits of skin taken to see if they were cancerous or not, and my two brothers have survived having larger parts of their internal organs removed because they were cancerous. People have donated spare kidneys to people needing new kidneys. So doctors certainly know how to remove small amounts of tissue and even entire organs safely for the person they are removed from.

What about selling some of "your" blood to desperate rich sick people in hope that "your" blood transmits some of "your" immortality? "You" should be able to get very high prices for it until and unless it soon proves not to work.

Presumably "you" are going to cut "your" hair and nails at the same rate as before. So maybe "you" should sell "your" hair and nail clippings as souvenirs or relics of the immortal man.

What about sperm donation? Make a deal with a sperm bank to sell sperm from the immortal man. People may hope that the sperm of the immortal man will make his children healthy immortal.

2) Jobs for the immortal man, whether or not he lets the world know about his status or keeps it secret as some answers suggest.

I don't know why you talk about an eternity of boredom. But maybe I don't get bored as easily as the "you" in your question. If "you" discovered "you" can't get injured or killed, "you" could plan on getting a series of highly dangerous jobs that are often considered to be exciting.

Of course some such jobs should have age limits, and organizations might not want to make exceptions for the Man Who Can't Be Killed merely because he thinks that he also doesn't age. So "you" should list those jobs in order of ascending age range and then plan on working in each one for a few years.

So "you" could become a soldier - probably in special forces if "you" can hack it - a policeman, a fireman, a miner, etc. etc. in the order of their upper age limits if they don't agree to make exceptions for "you" once it is proven that "you" don't age.

"You" could become a circus acrobat, a tightrope performer, a trapeze artist, a lion trainer.

"You" could become a movie stuntman and have a long career without worrying about getting crippled or killed. And it is possible that "you" might graduate to become an actor and maybe even a highly paid star. Some movie stars started as extras, stand ins, and stuntmen. And of course there is obviously a chance that a movie about "your" life will be made and "you" will get to star in it.

And someone planning a play or television show that they hope will run for many years or decades might want to hire a leading man who won't appear to age no matter how long it goes on for.

If "you" keep "your" condition secret, and are willing to commit crimes, "you" can blackmail one or more billionaires with fake deaths. If "you" have friends "you" trust "you' can arrange that billionaires or their family members have staged accidents in which something happens to "you" that nobody mortal could survive. But "your" confederates agree to hid the body and hush it up if they pay blackmail, and "you" and the accomplices split the money.

Accumulating a nest egg of a few hundred thousand or a few million dollars will be enough for an immortal to invest and become the richest person in the world in less than a century.

Since "you" had a $ 100.00 bill in your pocket to give to a homeless person, "you" don't seem like a total failure so far but reasonably successful in "your" career, whatever it is. So maybe "you" could continue in that career and try to be as successful as possible as fast as possible while saving as much of "your" earnings as possible and investing it as wisely as possible.

The best choice for investment would be funds that invest in a broad spectrum of companies so that returns and also risks are not as high as in some investments.

Some investments that are made each year should be marked to turn into cash in 50 years, others, in 60 years, others in 70 years, others in 80 years, others in 90 years, others in 100 years, others in 200 years, others in 300 years, others in 400 years, others in 500 years. If "you" make such investments for at least 100 years then "you" will turn those investments into cash beginning a mere fifty years after "you" start and continuing for centuries.

An investment growing at ten percent per year would multiply a thousand times in a little over 70 years. So every thousand dollars invested for a term of seventy plus years would become a million dollars at the end of that term (minus inflation, of course). So if one invests a thousand dollars for seventy plus years every year, at the end of the seventy plus years they will start getting a million dollars a year, minus inflation, year after year after year.

Every dollar invested for a time of 300 years at ten percent growth per year would become about a trillion dollars after 300 years, minus losses to inflation, but still many billions of dollars. So it would certainly be possible for an immortal person to arrange to someday have an income of many billions of dollars per year.

If an allegedly immortal character really is that immortal, then after their first ten thousand years of life, the decades (no more than a normal human life) of investing to get an income of a million dollars per year, and the centuries of investing to get an income of a billion dollars per year, and the centuries more of investing to get an income of a trillion dollars per year, and so on, will seem very short in retrospect, and it will seem to them as if they instantly became rich.

To them the decades and centuries of working and investing may seem no longer than the six years in elementary school seem to an normal old person looking back on their life. They will feel like they became super rich immediately after their childhood.

Answer 10

The big money is in services. Especially to governments:

"Sure, I can end their nuclear program. Don't ask me how, wire the billion dollars into my account upon my return, don't forget the tax exemption, and I'll be happy to live in your hush-hush gated community for a few years afterward. Just live up to our agreement, and I'll continue to be a quiet, upstanding, law-abiding citizen."

Of course, if you're invincible and immortal, 'services' can be a slippery slope, too. You can run quite the protection racket:

"Nice republic you've got here. Shame if something were to happen to it."

Answer 11

Participate in black markets

You may have noticed I already tried answering your question from the sandbox, but I'll expound further why this is the best option.

I will be giving my own interpretation of the parameters of the problem you gave, and then a corresponding explanation for the solution I will give in turn.

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1. You've only known you are immortal and invincible for just enough time to notice, but not enough to do a lot of things about it.

A rather lucky situation to start with. You can do pretty much anything from now on, real-life sandbox-mode enabled. Nobody important (at least to your knowledge) knows you are such, and those who tried to let others know are now the unfortunate not-really-lunatics. Conventional bullets and knives can't harm your ironskin, but I assume your internal organs did not receive the same blessings so you still need to be cautious of strong impacts, yeah? (Because then you'd be pretty OP if even your muscles and bones are Superman-ish, and your character would be broken beyond suspended disbelief.) All in all, you have the anonymity and immaturity that even most immortals (if there are in your world) will be jealous of.

2. You want to be rich ASAP, but you know of no way to share your blessings.

That's okay. You don't have to literally capitalize on your immortality by selling it. There are at least a million other ways to accomplish your goal, but only a few would be as exciting as the ones I'm suggesting.

3. You haven't done much about your life in general, and you're not really particular about being a saint.

The important thing is, now you have the chance to do so. More on what you can do later.

4. You have escaped the judgment of the one who gave you the blessings in the first place.

Well. That's just perfect. Heaven and Hell can't touch you for now (and I assume for the foreseeable future, too). Ethics, laws, governments, economics, all the control structures of your immediate world are beneath you. God might as well descended on Earth and took residence in your body. But don't get too excited.

5. You do not want to be hated, but you don't want to get bored.

A bit tricky, but workable since you're young. And also, you didn't specify what you feel about being feared, revered, or celebrated

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So, why black markets?

Because money and customer satisfaction are all that matters there.

Here's a couple of things only found within the black underbelly of society.

(Prices may not be 100% accurate.)

1. Human Body Parts

Just find someone healthy (and more importantly, willing if she/he is not an unclaimed corpse), and post his/her vitalss online to look for buyers.

Image Source

2. Exotic Animals

Where to even begin. Sadly, I just found two from my reference, but these sould be enough. Although, wildlife advocates will condemn you if you do not do something good afterwards.

A 5 pound to 7 pound horn can be worth well over $200,000 dollars.

The composite parts of the tiger could all fetch up to potentially 75,000 to 100,000 USD.

3. Firearms

Remember that these can be traded wholesale, and not entirely illegal, but illegal trades costs higher as you can see.

Image source

4. Hitman Services

Sort of number one sin, but pays good. Better practice your gun skills, then go straight for high bounty targets.

At the high end, a wealthy socialite who wanted her husband dead gave Johnson $200,000 in jewels as a down payment on the killing.

5. Fuel

Agents estimated they stole close to 16,000 USD in fuel every day, with the potential to steal 7 million USD a year.

Imagine that, for an organized crime of stolen oil.

6. Ransomware

Firstly, what is ransomware?

Ransomware is a type of malicious software that threatens to publish the victim's data or perpetually block access to it unless a ransom is paid.

Judging from the headline of my source:

Global Ransomware Damage Costs Predicted To Hit $11.5 Billion By 2019

you can guess just how unbelievably rich those evil nerds are right now, and they're not even immortal or invincible. Maybe you can coerce them and be their boss. However, your victims will hate you a lot, but at least they will fear you.

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You're right. About half of these things, as one might guess, occur online. Maybe the first thing to do is carefully delve down the deep web, where a lot of fun things other than money also exist.

Depending on how fast you really want to get rich, you can set the deadline of your millionaire goals to be around less than a year if you're starting to consider being a merchant in the black market, but the fun you will have throughout the journey is already guaranteed.

The sheer adrenaline rush of getting away with something illegal should keep you occupied long even after you have your first million as a budding immortal crime boss, unless God decides to take back those blessings sooner than anticipated.

While the living saints would definitely hate you for all that, they are not the only people in this world. There are those who will respect your services, those who will fear what you can do, those who will just have no idea. After being a millionaire though, or maybe even while acquiring that wealth, at least you should have done some other things you can be proud of, so that you dont live a boring endless life full of regret and missed opportunities.

Answer 12

A few ideas:

(ETA: Time estimates here are on the assumption that you have 10k in savings, are generally able to make money, and don't have a significant preexisting criminal record).

• 3 to 8 months - Go buy a 50 caliber machine gun. (You can get these in PA with a background check and an expensive stamp). Hang out at the southern border of New Mexico and shoot down every small private-looking plane you see crossing the border. Eventually, you're bound to find one full of drug money. Naturally, the cartels will come after you, but you really have nothing to be worried about. If you're shooting at them, the only choice they have is to shoot back or leave.
• 2+ years - For that matter, you could assassinate cartel leaders and take over the cartels. A primary weakness of these crime lords is their mortality. Since you don't have to worry about that, you can do this over and over, one cartel at a time until yours is the biggest and only crime syndicate in the world. Before long, you can start performing military takeovers of small countries, and eventually rule the world.
• 6+ months - But why not skip the cartels and go straight to conquering small countries? Go to a third world country and extort a rich tyrant. As long as you have plenty of ammunition, you can get pretty much anywhere because nobody can stop you. If you're not interested in conquering the country, you could just walk right into their mansion and demand that they give you a few chunks of their golden bathroom set. It's a small price to pay in exchange for the status quo.
• 6 years - If you want to go the legal rout, you could also learn to weld and go work on an oil rig for a few years. Since you don't need to eat or anything, you have essentially no expenses.
• 6+ years - Lastly, if you're up for a longer and more boring adventure, but with a much more substantial payoff, go convince Elon Musk to send you on a mission to retrieve this asteroid. Since you're immortal, your chances of failure are significantly reduced. I'm sure he'll be up for it if you can convince him that you're immortal, and if you offer to split the profits. If you're not sure how to convince him that he should listen to you, I suggest bringing a gun and shooting yourself. For that matter, any time one of his employees tries to stop you from proceeding to meet him, just shoot yourself again. I mean, I can't imagine not listening to someone who just walked up to me, shot themselves and lived.

I hope this helps! Good luck getting your money!

Answer 13

• You could sell your services to automobile and airplane manufactures as the best crash-test dummy of all time
• get paid on retainer by nuclear facilities around the world to handle incidents without risk of radiation poisoning
• start a youtube channel. Your videos would instantly go viral as you demonstrate your immortality and you would maintain a consistently massive audience.
• Take a video proving your immortality and then start a bidding war for the opportunity to research you.

Answer 14

It depends how ethical and moral you want to be.

It'd be easy to become a cult leader. There's plenty of cults that went by that were run by someone who could 'talk to god' or had been given amazing healing powers by god.

It'd be pretty easy to convince people to donate to your new church if you can prove your immortality to them. You might even be able to take over existing religions or at least cause offshoots of existing religions that now mainly worship you. And of course their new leader would need a monetary sacrifice to join the new church.

Religion is a profitable business.

Answer 15

Make a Youtube video of you getting shot in the head. It'll go viral pretty quickly, at which point you'll have companies crawling over each other to give you endorsement deals.

Of course you'll also have governments wanting to capture and study you, but you asked for the fastest route, not the safest.