The gun pressed against his temple. John McAfee spun the cylinder and pulled the trigger. The empty
chamber spared his life that day in Belize. But the man who built an empire on digital fear was playing a
deadlier game than Russian roulette.
Before his mysterious death in a Spanish prison cell, before international manhunts across tropical
jungles, before presidential campaigns and cryptocurrency schemes — John McAfee created something that
would touch nearly every computer on the planet.
His name became synonymous with protection in the digital age. Yet the man behind that legacy remained
an enigma wrapped in contradiction.
■ WHAT YOU'LL DISCOVER:
• The traumatic childhood that shaped his obsession with threats
• How he created the world's first commercial antivirus software
• The $100 million fortune — and how he lost it
• His Belize compound, armed guards, and the murder next door
• The escape through Guatemala that made international headlines
• His transformation into cryptocurrency prophet
• Two presidential campaigns run from exile
• The Spanish prison and his mysterious death
■■ TIMESTAMPS:
00:00 - Russian Roulette in Belize
03:30 - A Childhood of Fear
09:15 - NASA and the Dawn of Computing
16:00 - The Brain Virus: Seeing the Threat
24:30 - Building McAfee Associates
33:00 - Walking Away from $100 Million
41:15 - Paradise in Belize
52:00 - Gregory Faull's Murder
1:02:30 - The Great Escape
1:14:00 - Cryptocurrency Prophet
1:24:30 - Presidential Candidate in Exile
1:35:00 - The Freedom Boat
1:42:00 - Spanish Prison
1:48:00 - "If I Suicide Myself, I Didn't"
■ THE PARADOX:
"The boy who grew up scanning for danger became the man who saw the digital apocalypse coming before
anyone else. He built an empire on our fears, then spent the rest of his life running from his own."
■ THE NUMBERS:
• First antivirus software: 1987
• Sold company stake: 1994 (~$100M)
• Fortune after 2008 crash: ~$4M
• Twitter followers at peak: 1M+
• Crypto promotion earnings: $23M+
• Prison death: June 23, 2021 (age 75)
■ RELATED CONTENT:
[Tech history playlist]
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