Problem number one. The entrance isn't hidden making it a natural target for marauders. #2. The blast doors swing outward. What if debris covers the entrance or someone just needs to shove a wedge under each door and they're entombed. Yeah, this guy obviously built this simply to fleece some rich suckers.
6
This only proves that the individuals craving these grave sites
are a pack of confirmed lunatics.
F3
4
We're gonna party like the Donners!
5
I'm wondering if building a doomsday bunker on the site of a former nuclear missile installation is tempting fate. After all, who can say whether the Russians have failed to update their targeting plans?
I'm also wondering if the folks buying these sites are investing in the one sure thing that will ensure their survival -- their own personal health. What's the point of surviving in a bunker if you are 200 pounds overweight, totally out of shape, and have a life expectancy of five or ten more years?
The whole prepper industry has things backward. We should be working toward preventing catastrophe and improving ourselves and others. Otherwise, we are just living in a bad sequel to "Dr. Strangelove."
10
Good plot for a Netflix drama series.First episode goes like?
4
I don't understand the antipathy towards these doomsday preppers.
What is wrong with planning for a disaster? Is it better to just hope for the best and to plan on giving up if things get bad?
Maybe some of their plans are not realistic, or they go overboard.
But they are not hurting anyone, and if a horrible disaster strikes, and they can survive it, that is good thing. The more survivors the better.
Finally, a lot of commenters seem to think either nothing will happen or there will be an extinction level event rendering the earth unable to support life.
There are lots of disasters in between those extremes. Disasters in which some sort of bunker and \or level of preparedness would mean surviving the disaster.
Personally, I don't prep beyond having always having some canned food in the pantry and couple of gallons of bottled water in case a Sandy type of disaster hits. But I don't feel antagonistic towards those who do prep.
5
This article is proof positive that wealth and intelligence are unrelated. On the other hand, I had a good laugh.
8
The moment a real, civilization-damaging disaster happens, these people are no longer billionaires. Money is entirely dependent on a fully functioning government. And I suspect few billionaires have the practical and social skills needed to be accepted into a community of financial equals--they are used to buying the talent they need and ordering underlings around. The day the rule of law ends, and long-term survival is at stake, their employees will just kill them.
7
He's not saving lives, he's making money.
What are all these people going to do when Trump isn't president, the world has calmed down, and they're living fifteen stories underground in the middle of Nowhere, Kansas?
3
You have to love the irony--or perhaps it's more accurate to call it hypocrisy?--of the woman who doesn't want to depend on "big government, big food sources or big pharma," yet works as a health insurance agent.
9
This should be illegal. It incentivizes nuclear war. The rich could contribute to a public system and get a priority spot if it comes to that but, letting the uber rich build lovely compounds where they survive in splendor, while everyone else is killed...ridiculous.
Let them build what they want, but in the event of war or famine, the government manages the property.
5
So these rich folks think they're gonna survive in their bunkers? That should they ever decide to poke their heads out, that there wont be some very hungry and desperate survivors ready to take them out?
I suspect that any "above-grounders' who survive, they will be a formidable force to reckon with...and far more deplorable in their attitudes then these rich elites imagined.
What do these people think they'll be doing after "The Fall"? Staring at videos?
Dont they realize that the "above-grounders" are gonna figure out how to smoke them out?
The arrogance that they should survive, is whats gonna be the ultimate cause of their demise.
4
Imagine eating your rehydrated food, day in, day out, drinking reclaimed water, day in, day out, with your solar power providing so very little (if any) power due to the nuclear winter.
Shots would ring out within a week, sooner for the phone/internet junkies would could not stand the idea of No Internet!
(FYI, when Hurricane Katrina hit, we were in Hattiesburg, MS; phones were pretty much useless for 4 out of 5 people, and you could tell it; bands of students walking around; looting; just a feeling of everyone being on edge. Nothing like junkies who can't get their fix!)
2
How are they going to maintain there food supply. Or prevent angry mobs compromising their ventilation systems with poisoned gas?
3
I'm just curious, can those sixteen-ton doors that you mentioned be locked from the outside?
5
So these creepy places could easily fall into the wrong hands and use your imagination . . .
Or you don't really have to use your imagination since the article mentioned the Saudi Arabian MILITARY is interested in purchasing one of these compounds!
Wow, maybe we need Sensible Bunker Sales Regulation?
6
“Fear sells even better than sex,” Professor Hoopes said. “If you can make people afraid, you can sell them all kinds of stuff,” he added, “and that includes bunkers.”
Which is essentially the rhetorical strategy of Donald Trump, Fox News, and most of the right-wing media.
10
Perhaps we could somehow convince the buyers of these gold-plated monuments to stupidity that Armageddon is imminent. Once they go into lockdown we could bulldoze the earth over the exits of their lairs and leave them there. The rest of us can continue to do the hard work of living to avoid catastrophe without them. They will not be missed.
3
Tom S. should consider making that drive from GA to SD before the disaster strikes.
4
“Fear sells even better than sex,” Professor Hoopes said. “If you can make people afraid, “you can sell them all kinds of stuff” he added, “and that includes bunkers.” - It also includes Donald Trump.
10
The real question, not answered here, is this - how many luxury doomsday apartments do the Chinese and Russians have? Do they have more wealthy people hiding in old missile silos, waiting to emerge after the doomsday scenario (what ever it may be) than we do?
If so, this is unacceptable. We need a Manhattan Project to squirrel away more wealthy Americans, as fast as we can.
Mr President! We can not allow a luxury doomsday apartment gap!
7
I found a very affordable alternative in West Virginia at Fortitude Ranch. It is not a luxury survival condo in a missile silo but rather a place you can retreat to in a time of disaster. It is about a 2 hour drive from the DC area so it is easy to get to and cost about the price of a country club membership. Instead of gulf clubs you can bring your guns and shoot on the range. They also have RV pads for those with RVs as a bugout vehicle.
Great idea. When the next cataclysmic asteroid is detected headed toward Earth these bunkers could be subdivided and space rented out for large profits.
3
How about an article exploringt what could be a line, fine or not, between being a "prepper" and being prepared for a disaster, as that dose of imagination that initiates the investment in an earthquake kit, wildfire improvements or flood consideration is either balanced or runs amok.
That 26-hour drive from Georgia to Colorado, now that's gonna' take some imagination.
5
I've read several articles about these bunker buyers. My favorite was the remodeled missile silo with something like a dozen doomsday condos and a 12-ton door to the surface. I've met some hyper-wealthy people and 9 out of 10 are so entitled they would cut your throat over a parking space. Packing a dozen of them into an underground bunker sounds fun. They'd be hunting each other with machetes inside of six months.
14
Reminds me of all those "saved" Evangelicals who are waiting for their "Rapture" to occur. For some bizarre reason they think it would be a great thing to spend eternity in the exclusive circle of fellow Evangelicals like Kellyanne Conway, Scott Pruitt, Sarah Huckabee & her daddy, Betsy DeVos, honorary Evangelicals like Trump, etc. If those are the inhabitants of heaven then I think the rest of us would much rather perish in the Apocalypse. Same with the billionaires and their bomb shelters. They are welcome to enjoy each others company as the exclusive inhabitants of a desolated planet.
11
So first they make our civilization collapse through our consumerism + dirty energy. Then they watch a (fossil-fuel built) screen show bucolic landscapes with .... windpower.
Question: how long do you want to be buried alive before inhabitants turn on each other?
9
Reading this article, I couldn't help but be reminded of Vault-Tec in the Fallout games. Who else?
2
@Insert Original Pseudonym
My mind jumped to that too.
It would be wonderful if these bunker communities were run by a company like Vault-Tech. Each one of them a different psychological/social experiment with many being rather horrible for the inhabitants.
2
The underground bunkers of the rich are luxurious but cages none the less. Cages without sunlight and fresh air, trees, flowers and birds -- the simple things we take for granted. Humans need the natural world. An existence underground is more like a living hell.
6
This speaks more about today's ready availability of capital to pursue dubious ventures, than a rise in apocalyptic thinking. Also, I doubt the subterranean "condo" is luxurious as advertised. Knowing a little about construction costs, $20 million does not go far in this kind of challenging environment. It wouldn't be the first time the Times has been hoodwinked by a real estate huckster. A recent NYT feature extolled a purported $80 million Manhattan penthouse for sale, complete with a Lamborghini and 2 Rolls Royces. It turned out this listing was really for a bunch of small apartments, in a problem building, that haven't been combined yet, and likely, never will be.
3
@Peter Blau For one thing, the elevator looks like phony to me - indicating 14 levels. You'd be hard pressed to build 14 storey bulding ABOVE ground for $20 millon, much less one buried 200 feet underground.
3
So are you doubting the existence of missile bunkers? Do you think that they are all above ground? Is the article actually fake news?
That's easy- use an excavator to move a really big rock over the exit, and then start pumping water to flood that sucker. When she's full, they're done. Then she's all yours!
3
Two questions:
1) When disaster begins, how are you folks going to travel 1,000+ miles to get to your bunker?
2) When the destruction is over, how are you going to open a door that weighs 16 tons to get out?
Good luck with all that. I'd rather die on the ground than wait for death in a hole.
7
I agree with you. If the missiles do head our way, I want to be above ground at the first impact point. I have no interest in trying to survive in whatever is left of the world.
4
There is so much wrong with the thinking of this that’s it’s laughable. Logistics, the diesel running out and trying to power these toys on wind power, a potential heliport...... it’s flat out laughable. This guy must run to the bank shaking his head at his customers ..... my question for those customers has always been “ how do the fool and the money get together in the first place?”...... a 26 hour drive to get to one? The thinking is hilariously foolish
4
And while decides how much to raise the salary of the one armed guard when he has a monopoly on force?
1
So I take it none of these "preppers" watch The Walking Dead. Don't they know that the meanest guy with the most guns will take your luxury condo from you and throw you to the wolves with the rest of us poor non preppers?
69
@georgiadem There'll soon be no wolves left thanks to Trump's decimation of the Endangered Species Act.
15
Three good movies about this topic , Miracle Mile (about trying to get to your shelter when an event is impending) spoiler- they don't make it. 10 Cloverfield Lane-guy has fully stocked bunker and is paranoid miserable. The Road -the world after an event that is not worth living in. Last movie is scariest and should be required viewing for every human being.
3
This total folly reminds me of elementary school, circa the 1950’s, when we huddled under our little wooden school desks in safety drills to avoid the consequences of incoming Soviet ICBMs. And there were hard, inedible biscuits stored somewhere in the basement with some water to nourish all of us for the duration.
39
This does seem silly, but it's more a matter of scale than anything else. People with a lot of money can waste it on more expensive things than the rest of us. I happen to own seven canoes. I hardly ever use them. If I had more money, I'd probably have more canoes. A neighbor, about 55 years old, has a muscle car. It probably can go 150 miles an hour, but all he does is drive it to work and back. You see my point. Those of you who don't own anything foolish should post replies to this. If people are honest, there won't be any.
My hat is off to these intrepid entrepreneurs who know that a sucker is born every minute, and some of them are rich. I'll bet that all of us, in our heart of hearts, wish we had thought of it.
1
Why do you buy canoes that you don't use? I don't see them as collector's items.
2
Hmm...maybe the pyramids were actually Egyptian preppers’ survival bunkers? /s
1
Unless they’re willing to live permanently underground in the middle of nowhere (which I imagine most billionaires are not), how do they intend to travel to these Midwestern bunkers? With communication systems down, how do they contact the pilot of their private plane? If they somehow manage, will the pilot still be willing to fly them out of New York / LA / San Francisco? Or will they want to be with their family? Will the pilot’s family be offered refuge in the bunker too? Will the airport ground staff still be working, fuelling up the plane? What about the air traffic controllers? When they touchdown, how do they travel to the bunker? Once they arrive, will their ‘bunker neighbours’ even open the radiation-proof door if there’s a risk of contaminating inside? Oh well, guess I don’t have these problems. *Takes a sip of beer*
6
I don't know, every time I planned out something or dreamed of the way it was going to be, it rarely ever turned out that way. It's not exactly in where I thought I'd be 30 years ago things seem gone awry once in a while even when planning a stop for a burger after work.
When the end of the world comes, be it for me or 12 billion, it won't go exactly as planned. The latter not alt all.
2
"Fear sells even better than sex." This is the platform for McConnells'/Trump's platform going forward. Fear gets everyone's attention eventually, and pushing certain kinds, especially when fueled by massive corporate dollars, is a winning strategy.
4
Great plan, Richie Rich - until the "guard in fatigues gripping a rifle" figures out that you got the money and he got the gun.
7
A material placebo for peace of mind. And that windmill stands no chance in a tornado. Are these available on airbnb ? Or an overnight date for the Bachelor?
2
On one hand, the gullibility of people who are so fearful is hilarious. Y2K forever!
On the other hand, it's a sad commentary on the how fear makes us lose our good sense.
Barnum was wrong. In the USA, a sucker is born every second.
2
The apocalypse can't come soon enough for these people. And for the developers and advertisers of these ridiculous investments, fear, fear and the elitism of "freedom from fear" will continue to rake in profits.
Noah's Ark? Daddy's Home Theatre.
What a tremendous, amazing, spectacular new branding opportunity for the Trump Organization! Get on it boys.
3
A wonderful article and very cleverly written.
I like the last couple of lines the best.
The only other thing besides missiles that I associate with a bunker, is bunker mentality.
I looked up its definition which is :
" ...a state of mind especially among members of a group that is characterized by chauvinistic defensiveness and self-righteous intolerance of criticism...."
Add now - " members with money to throw it down a rat hole..."
3
These preppers live in a delusion. Assuming they could get to their bunkers (a big if) and they were filled to the brim with food, the smallest ripples in their world would be disastrous. They might be able to stockpile one year's worth of medicine, but then what? Appendicitis would be a fatal disease. A small cut could become rampant sepsis. No medical infrastructure would remain. Even if dying from natural disease, what would become of the dead? Living with the putrid corpses of your relatives would drive the preppers mad.
Even in small numbers, survivors above ground could flush them out by just knocking out their wind turbine and covering the air intakes with dirt.
And when they emerged after a year or so whether by choice or necessity, what would remain? They would have no money, no food, no transportation and if they were very lucky and strong, the ax they had could fell some trees and build another structure so they might live in the 1800's.
Give me my baseball mitt at ground zero to catch the incoming missiles.
2
What happens when the surviving hordes outside tear down the windmill and solar array?
4
What an amazing, tremendous, spectacular new branding opportunity for the Trump Organization! Get on it boys!
2
I hope they like their neighbors.
You can run, but you cannot hide.
1
Gophers will be able to survive a lot longer than the paranoid stricken cellar dwellers will.
2
Considering how much Islamic extremism and Middle East chaos and corruption is funded by the Saudi’s I find their interest in American survivalist shelters (I mean condos) telling. Does the Saudi military know something we don’t? Wonder if Trump has one somewhere.
3
This sort of reminds me of that Far Side cartoon from a long time ago. The guy opens the hatch and says to his wife “Honey, thank God we’re alive!” as all he sees around him are flames and absolute obliteration.
Indeed.
4
"and storerooms for food"
where do these people think the food is going to come from?
this time the threat is real. By 2050 the ecosystem will begin to collapse from climate change and human over population so what these people are buying is a nice quiet place to starve
7
Too much money, too little vision. These people are useless to society and civic culture. Let them bury themselves while alive for they are not noticed and will not be missed.
10
After the big blast, they can all meet through their underground tunnels to do the King Tut dance from SNL, and watch Mad Max together, for the rest of their lives!
3
Will they take staff with them to cook, clean and grow food? A doctor or nurse? Who is going to “keep the law and order” down there? My prediction is that they will start killing each other only after a few months. What a waste of money!
5
'These projects have plenty of skeptics, among them John W. Hoopes, a professor of anthropology at the University of Kansas who spent years studying the myth that the world would end in 2012. He accused doomsday investors of hawking “survival porn,” which he described as a “hypermasculine fantasy” that danger is near and a select few will be able to save themselves and their families — if they are prepared.
“Fear sells even better than sex,” Professor Hoopes said. “If you can make people afraid, you can sell them all kinds of stuff,” he added, “and that includes bunkers.”'
I know of one French Jewish family who, before WW2, prepped for a German invasion. They knew what was happening in Germany and when the invasion did happen, the entire family survived (they saved themselves).
Now catastrophe does not happen every other day, but to never have in mind surviving these Black Swan type events is a sure-fire way to permanently exit the gene pool.
1
The only people I’ve ever had issues with are my neighbors. My worst nightmare: locked up with my neighbor, the Trump supporter. I’ll take my chances with the chaos and the blue skies.
9
Oh yay. Trump is taking us back to the good old days of nuclear proliferation and the cold war. Wonderful what ignoring reality can do for you. And let's see how the economy does in a post nuclear age.
2
Doomsday condos.
Connected to the grid.
Um....
(sigh.)
5
I feel embarrassed (and disgusted) as I read this. If these people had instead spent their money electing politicians devoted to maintaining a peaceful and fruitful global order, we wouldn't need to worry about armageddon. They might have also considered creating shelter for the homeless instead of vast empty underground luxury hotels, but now I am the one being ridiculous.
11
Any prepper worth his salt will tell you that Rule One of survival is good opsec: never tell anyone where your redoubt is. So these folks on the prairie are goners. And that assumes they could even reach their bunkers after a ludicrously impractical 26-hour drive from Georgia -- in a national disaster? with everyone else bugging out too? Highways would quickly become looted parking lots.
Or: Build local communities, cultivate a garden, learn a useful craft or skill. Live with less now to live wisely in the future. Start creating the world you'd like to inhabit after a conflict.
9
Surviving armageddon will look like the movie "The Road". Survival will be from day to day. You will posses whatever you can carry on your back or in a cart that you will pull because the "beasts of burden" will have become food.Well fed, plump, millionaires who have survived in their bunkers will be food also when they eventually have to come out.
1
The article has some links to some of these places. Rich people - you're welcome to them. I would rather die in the apocalypse than live underground with those bad carpets and leather couches.
2
At the risk of being a heretic, I see apocalyptic visions of the world blowing itself up in some nuclear of biological conflict as simply being the slightly unhinged right wing brother of his slightly annoying, and overly earnest, sister who’s gotten into the hannon if i sing the words environmental, collapse and emergency, in the same sentence. Their both children of the same American and to some degree wider, western tradition of End of World adherents. This bother and sister team have an older, religious brother who also thinks things are at an end, but he’s got a religious version of the same story: humans have flown too high, they have angered the gods, they’ve stepped out of line and now will come the cleansing .,, etc. The world is not going to end, we are not all going to die, there will be no “inevitable” destructive exchange of nuclear weapons, the climate won’t “collapse” in ten or twelve or eleven years. The mirror of history simply says this: humans are the most adoptable of all living things and that we, humans will cause change and we will change to adopt to the changes we make. The problem with all apocalyptic models is that they assume humans and human history marches in a straight line caused by what Marxist historians used to call “inexorable forces”. There are no inexorable forces, just us.
Gotta love that elevator schematic, huh? Symbolism! (Also, the only way in. Better hope it doesn’t become stricken with E.D. —Elevator Dysfunction.)
3
How would one make a 26 hour drive after a disaster of the magnitude of the one they are fearing? A decently strong hurricane is enough to jam roads and empty gas stations.
3
I have long been convinced, and news stories like this article only confirm it, that almost all the deniers of human-caused climate change know full well that it is actually an established fact -- they just don't want to alter their lifestyles or impinge upon their profits by making the economic and social changes necessary to combat it. The one per cent believe that they have the money and the resources to protect themselves from the inevitable flooding of the coast lines, the massive droughts, the planet-wide extinctions and the like, and that these will primarily be the problems of the "little" people like us. It is more likely, however, that the surviving few will come to envy the dead.
4
The security personnel at the survival chateau also has a plan. It involves not letting the rich in, and saving their own families.
4
This is exactly the problem with capitalism in its current state. As the article says: "Fear Sells"
We need more empathy towards others and this planet immediately to change it
3
I returned annually for clinical work in Haiti after the 2010 quake. (Great respect to my Hattian friends). I witnessed Hattians with little more than a handheld sledgehammer, remove multiple slabs of reinforced concrete within a startlingly short time. If they think no one will get in, that’s kind of funny.
2
Why bother? They are just taking their inability to cope and help solve problems underground. Remember the 'Biosphere' experiment? Quite simply it is hard work to live in a civilization and try to make the world a better place for all - not some.
2
Even if they survive in their bunker they won’t have the capability to resume life on the surface. There will not be enough people simply to do the hard manual labor of farming and rebuilding even if they had the stored supplies.
4
How curious to hope to hide in the very missile sites that were--perhaps still are--prime targets in a nuclear attack plan. Wouldn't it be ironic if these former missile sites were the first targets of a nuclear exchange? May one never come.
1
I hope to spend my last days locating the air intakes of all these places and sabotaging them in whatever way that I and my fellow surface dwellers can imagine. The best preparation for your own last days might be to make the most of the days you have right now. Even better would be to act now in ways that might make an apocalypse less likely for all.
6
They could save their money by supporting progressive economic policies whose benefits will help all members of society, thus making social collapse less likely.
7
The biggest problem with the survivalist mindset is the notion of inevitability. If these people actually buy bunkers, then they’ll be less likely to use their formidable resources and influence to improve matters and help avoid the apocalypse. To them, civil collapse is acceptable. The second biggest problem is really their own. If the destitute hordes, myself included, know where these bunkers are, we will eventually find a way to breach their defenses and bring all the joys of the civil collapse they sought to avoid directly into their fortified living rooms.
4
"Mr. Hall has outfitted the building with five air filters, connected it to the electrical grid, drilled a well to the local aquifer, and set up diesel generators, a wind turbine and a battery bank, all for backup power."
Hmm, I'm no electrical engineer, but given the high-techness of Mr. Hall's venture, and the dependence on low-tech stuff like an electric elevator, relying on stored diesel, or hoping your wind turbine survives the apocalypse and the bands of zombies that most likely would follow.
Abd then there's the idea of spending your last hours in a hole in the ground in Kansas...I'll take my chances up here.
3
A 52-year-old, a 62-year-old and a 79 year old entered an apocalyptic bunker (permanent retirement community) with some depends, medical marijuana and a VHS of the Apprentice. As the bunker door closed they realized it was not the end of the world it was their grandkids making them disappear so they could hack into their Social Security account.
5
Euphemistically speaking, there'll probably be a lot of "having the neighbors over for dinner" in the near-term aftermath of the perceived apocalypse.
It's not so different from anyone buying a 2nd home. You've simply added a new level of paranoia to process. Buyers are paying a premium to protect against... what? I'm not sure. Maybe owning a survival condo 26 hours away is a talking point at dinner parties. Maybe $1.3 million is cheap for a retirement condo near the Rockies.
Point being: Prepping is really more of a hobby than anything else anyway. People derive some sort of satisfaction from buying survival gear even if they never use it. $1.3 million is a lot of money. However, is it really different from buying a boat or a condo with a golf course? I'm mostly surprised seemingly average people would invest money on such a passive hobby.
A survival plan centered on your own neighborhood makes a lot more sense. Step one: Is your family even in one place? You're unlikely to encounter an unexpected emergency conveniently. Do have a plan to get everyone together? Who is going to pick up the kid from school? Who is going to check on Nana at the home? Are the trains running? You might need to pick up your wife from work.
Expected emergencies are much easier. Plan to be completely alone for 9 days. That's about the max amount of time it takes the National Guard to get things under control. You need shelter, food, water, etcetera. We have enough camping gear lying around the house, I'm honestly prepared without even trying. Obviously geography matters. Fires versus hurricanes and so on. Plan around that. You're done.
1
Reminds me of a book our students read this year; "The City of Ember".
Isn’t crazy to believe that you can survive the apocalypse by retreating alone in a bunker ? Isn’t so that one should do exactly the opposite: i.e. engage and cooperate with other humans ? The super rich who can afford super bunker will probably not make it. People who can stick with a group and make it work whatever the difficulties are, people with social skills and useful knowledge in other words will be the survivors.
6
This would delicious irony: What if tensions rose to such a level that the bunker people got into their cars and sped to their bunkers. Safe and sound in the old silos and depots, the Russians' launched but they forgot to change the targeting codes from the 50s and 60s, so all nukes blasted the old bunkers. The world came to their senses, no retaliation was called for since they were just 'empty' bunkers, peace was declared and the world was saved.
2
No doubt there are multiple scripts in process/projects in development based on this premise with myriad storylines. Hoping it will result in one or more fewer above-ground epic disaster behemoths.
I would pay to see the rom-com.
We often speculate about where the wealthy people who funds climate deniers and whose investment strategy is more pollution and environmental destruction for more wealth to hoard are going to live? Now we know, they think that all their hoarded wealth will buy them protection from the “invading” caravans of desperate people and the environmental consequences of their greed and mendacity. Just get a condo in a missile silo and all will be well, that is until the food and water runs out and the air becomes unfit to breathe. Its an amazing thing eh?
3
There is nothing new, flash back to the cold war days of the 60's and 70's. just a little more luxurious.
2
this doomsday prepper heaven is useless if the electric grid is down and generators are only a temporary fix.
Moreover, how are you going to get there in the event of a disaster, when roads are closed?
Better work for peace and justice.
2
What would be the point? If there really is ever an apocalypse, would you really want to live to see it? You might have a little oasis for yourself but if all the support structures of society are gone (including people), it would be an awful experience to survive.
1
Trapped underground for months or years with your fellow condo owners? You better get along really well with everyone or you'll wish you'd just stayed on the surface.
3
Survivalists have long been a harmless manifestation of the clueless American male. Sounds like survivalism has moved to "the next level" in terms of size, costs and complexity, but remains a harmless manifestation of the clueless American male.
And now it seems to be helping to move capital out of urban centers to more spacious rural locations. It's a fad of course and won't last, but what's wrong with (over-) monied Americans sinking some of their many, many millions into useless bunkers in the country?
16
Kansas huh? Nice to know the earth will carry on with some of the most dynamic, exciting and progressive our society has produced! Bon chance, mes amis!
1
The real apocalypse seems to be fairly slow moving, but its starting to pick up speed. Climate change and warming are as dangerous, if not more so, that a nuclear exchange. The population displacement, famine and disease that will gradually, but inevitably overwhelm countries isn't likely to be addressed or mitigated from a bunker. I can't help but wonder why people are willing to spend millions to come out of a bunker into a post-nuclear hellscape yet can't bring themselves to accept and deal with man made climate change.
49
@AnObserver
Perhaps the people buying these bunkers are taking climate change more seriously than others.
@Norville T Johnson - Not likely. You can't really hide from climate change and you and your loved ones can then die alone, in the dark as your power, food and water disappears.
2
This battered earth is our only home. We need air, oxygen, sunlight and green growing plants. We need space to be sane and clean water and clean air to live.. The underground dwellers closed in by cement will go crazy deprived of earth's grounding, growing, sunlight, air and living in a limited artificial world. We need to put all our energy into protecting the earth, not escaping from it. There is no life of any kind without an earth that is habitable. Escapism from a hard to face truth is a common human trait. But it is always best to face hard reality and work on the real problem.
31
I find it ridiculous but at the same time with all the dooms day movies out there I can see where some people can’t wait for a real doomsday scenario were you shoot your neighbors to get the last bottle of ketchup from a destroyed supermarket.
The whole thing is ridiculous but not in the USA with Trump at the helm.
33
I think I’d rather be dead than trapped underground eating canned peaches for the rest of eternity! Isn’t that similar to being buried alive?
51
Fear is a powerful intoxicant.
19
Fear is how to win the presidency.
1
If the end is nigh I am crawling into the hot tub with the best tequila I can find.
36
@NBN Smith The most sensible solution.
1
It's about what you would expect from humans to imagine that their own privileged survival in a bunker somewhere is important while what is left of civilization goes up in flames.
21
I recall reading an article about someone who gave a TED talk being asked by some seriously wealthy attendees who to keep a personal, armed security force loyal to you in the face of Armageddon.
Yup, good luck with that.
8
Mr. Hall isn't selling bunkers, he's selling tombs.
41
"My interest is from a place of freedom.” Ah yes, freedom: 20,000 square feet underground with a few dozen other people and only one way out. Freedom! Horrible, horrible freedom.
24
Of, for heavens ‘ sake. I remember when my Uncle Art had an underground bunker built to protect against nuclear war. Why do these billionaires think they are so worth saving? Better they have a Scrooge- like conversion and use their money to make life better for all while they’re alive.
24
Two words for these folk: Biosphere 2
14
So doomsday arrives, everything is blown up, the rich safely in their bunkers. What happens when they finally have to exit the bunker??
21
Do any of you people out there really believe humanity is going to be around 100 years from now?
14
Yea, everyone will be in the vicinity of their shelter when and if disaster strikes.
14
After reading Hugh Howey's "Wool" series I'll never look at missile silos the same way again.
4
I would want to know that a cute pool guy would be included in the survival plan.
27
In the extremely unlikely event of a breakdown in the government, and law and order, I know where I'll go to prey on the rich....haha!
Seriously, don't these people understand that if their weird dreams come true, all they've done is 'concentrate' themselves in a particular area where a much larger group of people with less will lay siege?
9
Haven't these people watched any episodes of The Walking Dead? Nothing like that lasts.
8
So if there's a nuclear war, or even a mass missile launch, don't the Russians and others have these silos on their maps...
5
@PJ then theres that 26 hour drive...add the additional travel time trying to get through evacuation grid lock.And that survivalist SUV won't have the range even on a good day.
2
What kind of life is it to live in a concrete tomb, isolated from all the world? That’s not survival, it’s self-imposed imprisonment. How many years will these people live in their tombs until they go insane, or their diesel runs out?
14
And when all is said and, worse, done, when they leave their bunker to walk the dog, what do they expect to find, grass, flowers, trees, and clean air?
17
There are 12 apartments in this complex. After the regular food runs out, do the residents of the other 11 units start to look tasty?
22
Wow the people commenting here all took a trip on the bitter bus. I should start a new drinking game where I tske a drink every time someone tries to sound smart by throwing out the word dystopian. In any case, people can spend their money how they see fit. I also love the irony of people hating on capitalism on the comment board of a pay-walled website belonging to an enterprise that exists by selling ads for everything from luxury goods to toothpaste.
9
The video screen in the bedroom is a great amenity; the kids will have a front-row seat as the radiation-scarred mutants (me included) come calling.
9
The whole thing strikes me as creepy. I'm not particularly claustrophobic, but find the idea of being underground hiding behind a 6 ton door disturbing. So, how long would folks stay there (no stored food supply or number of generators is endless)? Would you participate in helping others or simply hide from disaster? Do you come out and help with recovery? If the assumption is that the rest of the world would be wiped out (a la a Hollywood sci-fi pic), what would there be to return to anyway?
Personally, I'll take my chances with the rest of humanity. I'd rather be above ground with other people, help as I can, and die if I must - thanks.
24
A bunker that is not secretly located is not a bunker.
13
These folks obviously haven't played the Fallout video game series. "I don't want to set the world on fire. I just want to start a flame in your heart."
3
@OnABicycleBuiltForTwo
Brilliant! We love that game in our house.
1
@William H :) I'm so glad some folks get my geeky references. "War. War never changes..."
I don't think the folks who bought into the Survival Condo have thought it through. My prediction is that when an Armageddon comes, they'll show up to find a locked gate with their condo occupied by the guards' families. And an armed guard telling them "Thanks for the condo...now go away"
34
People over estimate their ability to perceive risk and under estimate what it takes to avoid it. They should not be nearly as concerned about a nuclear war as the grid failing for as little as two weeks. People are prepared for nothing and looting would be rampant as they search and try to secure food wherever available. And make no mistake, despite reader comments about "preferring death to live in these situations", everyone gasps for the last breath.
9
Rod Serling wasn't far off at all. Anyhow, learn from Burgess Merideth's mistake. Keep your second pair of reading glasses safe and nearby. You'll have lots of time to read ... alone.
20
@ Joanne Dr. Strangelove. Brilliant.
1
Talk about pipe dreams.
The assumptions these folks have to be making is that after, oh, say three years underground they'll come back up and what? Find that the hundred of Nuclear power stations didn't melt-down or that after all that dust and aerosols settled out of the air the Sun has started to heat the atmosphere very rapidly?
Check you assumptions folks. Prevention is still the best medicine.
To quote Detective "Dirty" Harry. "Gee! in all the excitement I lost count. You feeling lucky? Punk!"
5
How is this kind of thinking any different from that of schizophrenia patients? The only difference is these people have the means to manifest their delusions.
I don’t say any of this facetiously.
13
These people have painted themselves into a corner, and there won't be no coroner.
5
"I don’t like to be dependent on anything, be it big government, big food sources or big pharma,” she said.
Even in the end of times, there is inequality.
6
First one that pops into mind is oxygen. Anyone with a little bit of science in their educations starts to suffocate when thinking about the task of suppling fresh air from a polluted atmosphere. As for preparing for civil unrest....they will find you. Just has the kings of Egypt thought, "we can take it all with us", it is a rich man's folly to love his life more than the sake of humanity as a whole..
18
The fellow who is 69 and worried about surviving doomsday seems to be unaware that his own personal Armageddon is just a few years away. Embrace the horror that is coming for you my friends.
18
1.3 million dollars to live in a vault on the Kansas prairie? I think I'd rather take my chances above ground.
12
With all that concrete down below, I want a skate park!
5
Simply a narcissistic approach to a dead end road.
Maybe spend "your" millions helping the homeless instead?
11
The people who buy these things are so oddly attached to life. What exactly would be the point of living if it came to this? Count me dead. Please.
13
Did anybody else see that picture and instantly recognize it from Star Wars? Do the homes come with Ewoks?
4
All of the infrastructure necessary to keep these future groundhogs alive is totally dependant on mechanical systems on the surface - including the emergency diesel generators (diesel fuel comes from refineries). During the expected apocalypse, these poor individuals are surely going to die a horrible suffocating death. But at least they have a nice swimming pool. And here I thought the ultra-rich knew so much more than us ordinary souls. Yes, I know, Trump.
15
I rather hate to put it so bluntly, but doesn't it seem as if the only people left after the apocalypse will be exactly those we've spent our lives avoiding at cocktail parties?
24
I remember the fallout shelters of the 1950's and early 1960's. Same principle but not as lavish.
It's ironic that those fallout shelters in backyards were a reaction to the missiles that were in the silos being converted to high-end disaster shelters today, and equally irrational.
11
If you have a lot of money and want to spent it, I guess an underground bunker is better than a fifth car or a fourth house. People with money to burn.
I'm far from rich, but in the event of an economic collapse, I have an off-grid, self-sufficient piece of land and house on the pacific beach of Colombia, South America. A tropical paradise, free fish, free tropical fruit, and no need for money. The preparation websites I have read all say to have a place outside the U.S. where you can stay for a month or two in case the banks shut down and you have no access to cash and cannot use credit cards. Some gold is also a good idea.
2
Just what to get the billionaire who already has everything! I'm sure the first couple weeks will be fun but what about the first couple years?
7
While I'm certainly not prepping for an apocalypse, I do believe in a bit of common sense. We live in the Midwest ... home of flooding, snow and tornados. So we keep a week's worth of food, water and other necessities in a corner of the basement.
12
@rino If flooding is a concern for you, why would you keep your emergency supplies in the basement? That seems like a recipe for mold and disappointment.
1
The best thing about this article was reading the comments.
Highly enjoyable!
Thanks to the smart, witty, thoughtful, caring, funny NYTimes readers for changing my mind after reading about the rich preppers: it would be a loss if all humans perished.
9
I second that!
2
The radiation should dissipate, easily, in a thousand years. I can emerge from my cryochamber, ensconced in my luxury bunker, clutching my single share of Eastern Airlines (preferred) stock, and my roll of Enron.
18
This article highlights the extreme absurd cases. But someone explained it to me in terms of insurance. If a nuclear war happens once every thousand years then there is an 8% chance of going through one in a lifetime. Most experts think it is closer to a 20% chance.
A nuclear exchange between Russia and the US would kill half the population. That is a 10% chance of dying from nuclear conflict and a 10% chance of going through incredible hardships. If the average college educated American earns a million dollars after taxes then how much insurance should they buy if the insurance protects them from any existential risk?
Most probably spend much more on car insurance over their lifetime than would be needed to hedge against all the existential risks. At a minimum they would need enough gas to make it to Mexico.
What I would like to know is how much more effective it would be to use all that doomsday money to lobby Congress to reduce existential risks.
9
This looks like another very good deal for Mitch McConnell and family. He can sell you top-grade aluminum from the Russian factory that he ushered into Kentucky. The products will have to be shipped to you on his wife's Chinese shipping lines. But if his closest friend, Russia, needs to defeat your doomsday den, then Mitch knows how to do that as well because his factory designed the material and he allowed Russian intervention into our elections to keep his economic interests safe and promises to keep Putin in the loop.
16
Only in America.... Instead of paying awesome amounts of money for only temporary solutions that will not make you safer or keep you alive when society around you vanishes, this money could be used in the here and now to make this world a better place for everyone. Hence, no need to shield from a collapse.
Somebody here mentioned 'The Road', both book and movie are just terrifying and indeed, no bunker will help.
But I have to applaud these smart realtors. Again so very American. They make a more than decent dime on selling what nobody needs for a serious profit. Might that be an underlying theme of why our world actually is at the brink of disaster? Hmmmm.
23
Imagine if Americans could actually live free. That is the American Dream.
6
Isn’t there a Star Trek episode where survivalists entomb themselves in a bunker, not believing true reports from outside that crisis was averted and all is well?
The fact that none of these sites seems to include a library says it all.
34
What a great get rich scheme! For the bunker sellers that is.
So when the dust clears these folk are just going to poke their heads out and pick up where they left off? They can't survive without a latte much less electricity, water, medical care or a maid. One flu epidemic would wipe out the entire silly lot of them. And who would clean their toilets? Not to mention that most of them are too old to reproduce, so I guess their generation is it.
17
Yay.. let these rich paranoid crazies lock themselves in their bunkers with their guns and MRE’s! It will and keep them off the streets. The truth is that even Saddam Hussein and Adolf Hitler couldn’t hide forever in their elaborate guarded bunkers. The idiots who spend money on these things probably don’t realize how much they enrich the immigrants they probably hate by constructing these shrines to survival foolishness. Odds are the immigrants will simply out survive them.
10
Cockroaches and rich people after the apocalypse ... I am not sure cockroaches deserve that
32
The Bunker didn’t save Hitler. Nor will these save those who feel they are the new Master Race by dint of their wealth and whiteness.
8
The majority of the bunker builders are most likely the same folks denying the impending carnage bequeathed by their pollution profiteer tax subsidies.
11
It's insurance in another form.
You don't need it until you need it.
Then those who have paid in advance WIN BIG
1
@Pono, but what will they have won?
12
You, too, can survive on packets of reconstituted pasta primavera!
How do I know? Because we got a free sample in the mail. Along with a catalog full of survival gear. Turns out the preppers have booths at outdoor sports expos, using the fact that food packets are handy for camping, to get their foot in the door with college students such as my kid.
The good news is they do sell survival packages for the dog! Can’t walk him in a bunker though.
8
Looks like a great place to hold the CPAC 2020 convention. Last one in shuts the door, guys!
35
After the apocalypse, the only fresh meat will be the survivors.
21
Do these middle-age and senior men seriously think they will repopulate the planet after the apocalypse?
What a pathetic world view.
Instead, they could be doing something visionary with their wealth to foster a healthier society, raising people up.
But I guess I’m naive to think that with great wealth comes wisdom or a generative spirit.
40
Greedy people focused on saving selves, they could fix the problems and salvation would be unnecessary
16
These bunkers can’t be self-sustaining indefinitely. The preppers’ zeal to survive into a post-nuclear world is short-sighted and naïve. Be careful what you wish for.
12
Two thoughts:
1) why are these people so afraid of death? Every single one of us is going to die at some point, why try to “outrun” it?
2) since we’re all going to die anyway, why not enjoy the time we have on earth, and - dare I say it - try to contribute to humanity’s CURRENT enjoyment of it? People are actually interesting and fun to get to know if you don’t spend all your time conjuring delusions about how evil they are.
33
Before I start reading comments, I'm wondering how many it will be before someone blames Mr Trump. For anything.
4
So the one guy thinks after things hit the fan he'll just casually drive from Carolina to Dakota ? Have these people even seen Mad Max ? He not getting out of the state. Delusional !
24
(For now, if disaster strikes, the plan is for them to pack the car and make the roughly 26-hour drive from Georgia to South Dakota.)
I’d say it’s a pretty minor disaster if someone’s able to gallivant around for 26 hours and across half the country.
67
Bless their hearts. Used to be we just found a cabin in outback OZ or north of Edmonton and found a way to fill our storerooms with enough bulghur and dehydrated milk to make it thru atomic winter. The amenities we expected consisted of all the books we hadn't read, potable water and maybe a heat source that would keep us alive. Pool parties were way optional.
27
I wish rich people would read. Cormac Macarthy's "The Road" is likely prescient regarding whatever civilization-ending event is in our future. The man and his son find a bunker, one they could stay in for considerable time. They don't. The human drive to keep moving toward some sort of possible hope, some hint of a future that includes community, moves them forward. Besides, the man realizes that masses of other desperately hungry and violent people will find the bunker and destroy them. The article's armed guard(s) will be the first to go, and it will be laughably easy to dispatch him. Not to mention that if you're planning to shelter underground, you need to fly there without hesitation at the first notice, not amble to ND. Which means you need to provide shelter for the helicopter pilot and their family, because in this "I'm out for myself" world, why should they drop everything and leave their families to save you? We always come back to networks and community, though I'm not surprised people who think a virtual world beneath the ground is the answer wouldn't realize this.
80
Great book albeit heart wrenching.
7
@Whittingham: Yes, The Road should be required reading. - For all the deniers out there who think life will go on like a never-ending lollipop - I believe The Road is one of the most frightening examples what our definite future looks like Their is no boundary for humanity's capacity for evil and destruction, humans are ugly creatures, and when everything else disappears and fails - and it is and it will, humans at their absolute worst - survival? Survive for what? When we've destroyed it all - again, survive for what? The only question is how can we make our suffering and that of our loved ones, to the last breath less painful and less violent. That's all we'll need to focus on.
7
@Randé Just a random thought, have you ever noticed how some people tie themselves into knots reaching the deepest depths of existential horror? Like that's how you score points?
1
The Atlantic has also reported that the 1% are purchasing land in New Zealand for the apocalypse.
Frankly, the apocalypse happens, I really don’t want to be left alive.
16
@Kate
They should read, “On the Beach” by Nevil Shute.
2
I hope Mr. Hall's wind turbine does not get destroyed during the 'end times' since they will run out of diesel and the electrical grid is unlikely to be much help. I assume they have plans for growing food...
15
Mr. Hall has that all thought out. Yes, indeed. It’s called Soylent Green.
10
As a lower middle class worker who’s more familiar than she should be with the brevity of life (thanks largely to a lot of loved ones who’ve passed), I always laugh at the seemingly endless lust for immortality amongst the wealthy. News flash: it’s not going to happen.
55
If things ever got so bad one had to retreat to a bunker, I doubt pool maintenance would be a welcome burden.
27
Forget Doomsday. I want one of these cool apartments right now. Firing range, cinema, only a few neighbors and most won't show up--if at all--until the end of time. The perfect retirement community for me and right there in the heart of Kansas. Wow, where can I give away my $1.3 million for a basic apartment.
What is wrong with people?
14
The conservative and the liberal can look forward to arguing about Trump in their underground bunker in perpetuity.
11
What did they do with the old Archie Bunker system? … Those were the days.
2
Really, who is making all the $$. Whoa must be the fear mongers inc. What a way to live afraid of ones own shadow.
Pity.
4
My first thought was that this is the type of thing that one might need here in Northern California to survive any number of calamity. One would be able to survive fire or earthquake. Of course this is total overkill and I would not want to be beholden to a group of people who I presume would assume power in a might makes right scenario
5
@FerCry'nTears
The first task in Nor Cal is to find a site that won't be affected by earthquakes. Engineering to withstand a quake would be ultra expensive. There's a reason missile silos weren't put in California.
3
@Maryann H
It is not possible to find a site in California that won't be affected by earthquakes. The truth is that you cannot build a structure to withstand a nine or greater quake (I was married to a civil engineer for 16 years). The key is to live in a structure that will not fall on you and kill you, such as bricks. Then you hope a gas explosion does not kill you. The fires are super scary! There are people who are defending in place who are surviving these fires while people are dying trying to flee. In that case you want a inflammable structure. Raking the forest is the worst idea I have ever heard!
2
All this does is remind me not to take what we have for granted.
12
An old expression "You can run but you can't hide"applies here as well, reminds me of relatives that have legal small arms hidden in their houses located in a rural area .
The fear is that supermarkets will fail along with everything thing else in the nearest large city and many will come to their town to get their food. I said "if that happens which one with your small automatic rifles will you fire at when a mob of one hundred thousand or more city folks wishing for your breakfast cereal come up yo' driveway '.
Silence followed.
15
Can’t wait for the leisurely 26 hour drive to the spot!
Also, won’t a wood burning fireplace attract attention?
20
Won’t the balloon going up start forest fires and, huh, deplete their potential supply of cooking fuel? Just asking. ;-)
6
I need one of those condos.
I figure if the blind have the will to live
I can learn to live like a mole.
7
Why do the rest of us only get "thoughts and prayers" when it comes to survival?
31
At that point cyanide would be preferable.
Who wants to endure and survive the total death of every beautiful and lovely thing about existence?
It seems we’re pretty close already.
Anyone know where one can get hold of a caplet or tow?
21
So let me see if I understand this...
Somehow the "candle get lit"
The world endures a nuclear exchange
Millions if not Billions die
But down in the Bunker
Everyone is having a good time?
Okie Dokie
I for one am hopeful that no such nuclear exchange will ever happen but should it come to pass I've always said I hope the first one goes off about 10' above my head!
25
@Java Junkie. It's been decades since anyone seriously worried about nuclear war and now a bunch of old, cranky plutocrats think it's a good idea to start stoking the flames again?
3
@Java Junkie. It's headscarves since anyone seriously worried about nuclear war and now a bunch of old, cranky plutocrats think it's a good idea to start stoking the flames again?
1
If these are the people who will “survive” I hope I am right underneath the blast.
41
Why do I always think about the tale of the telephone sanitizers when I read stories like this?
10
So long, and thanks for all the fish.
2
How will these “survivalists” live without their prepared food delivery services?
26
Any of you see Don Johnson in A boy and his dog?
2
@Gregarious Recluse
Unfortunately yes.
One of the most misogynistic movies ever made.
1
@Roxie Actually, it was Harlan Ellison's way of telling the world how much he disliked the old "Lassie" TV series.
The best survival strategy is to create a more caring and collaborative world in which conflict is reduced. Like the Scandinavian countries today.
But money doesn't correlate with intelligence. Sharing one's hard (and maybe ill-) gotten wealth is anathema to some; they'd much prefer to spend the rest of their lives in a concrete bunker, just because it's theirs and they know others don't have one.
35
Usually, billioners inherited their money, and if they make more, it is by exploiting workers and having brokers invest in Wall Street. They didn’t work hard for it. With very few exceptions.
4
I came of age in the sixties when anybody of means built themselves a fall out shelter. I remember attending the house warming of wealthy friends of the family in which we toured the tunnel in a conga line past the indoor pool and into the shelter. I stayed behind after everyone left to imagine what it would be like to live in it.
The thing itself was horrible - all concrete and bunk beds, no amenities, just the basics and the naive idea you could get by with an air filter and a three week stay.
But my imagination was piqued. I designed many versions of the perfect hobbit house, not so much to survive nuclear war, but to give some lucky family member or random traveler a chance should things break down.
I haven't spent one red cent on anything, but I love to dig, I love to build, I know how to grow food, how to save seeds, and I am working on a manual to not only survive, but enjoy a life so lived.
The land we live on was homesteaded at the turn of the last century, the old buildings still there and gently falling into the earth. We moved into the original pioneer house in 1960 with no electricity, no running water, no furnace, no plumbing. There wasn't even an outhouse, the bushes in the summer and the barn stalls in the winter apparently sufficed.
And here we are all up with computers, satellites, rockets, weapons of mass destruction, drones, GMOs, and whatnot. Amazing how far we have come and may now have to go back from whence we came in order to survive.
26
@Memi von Gaza I glad you are writing a manual at your homestead! Your descriptions are lovely and lively and made me want to read more!
2
Too funny that much of that underground space is used for luxuries instead of storing food and the area and equipment needed to grow food. Not to mention equipment to purify water and recycle waste water (yum!), spare parts, tools, machine shop, surgery/dental area, and all the other things needed to keep the place running and people healthy. Oh, and also the quarters of the "hired help" to make it all work.
Apparently the clients expect the apocalypse to be over in a week or two, after which they can just drive back to their normal homes.
41
@Mman1
There's all kinds of things that builders of these things haven't thought of, such as redundant systems. What happens if your elevator breaks down and you want to go topside? How do you repair something if you can't get to the machinery?
Similarly, who has enough medical expertise to treat people who become ill, and how do you stockpile all the medicines you might conceivably need? Most expire within 2-3 years.
I could go on but you get the idea. The problems of running one of these things are similar to those in the "Mars living simulator" that was tested some years back. All kinds of issues came up that no one thought about beforehand.
14
Back in the seventies, my late, rather righty brother was convinced that there would be a societal collapse, an invasion by Russia, or all misfortune at once.
So he and his wife bought survival rations and lined their basement shelves with them. I mean a lot of it. Guns, too, of course.
A couple of years go by and nothing happens. A package or two disappears from the shelves. Nothing happens and more are withdrawn. Nothing keeps happening and after a few years, all gone. Nothing left but people who were yet convinced that the end times are near... They didn't restock. They did divorce.
Those end times might be nearer now. Just read the news. But this time methinks underground won't do.
11
"Survival Condo" or Survival Crypt? Who knew one could sell underground livable crypts so fast? Maybe the coming apocalypses is the real reason for the wealth gap increase and why the wealthy are hording ungodly amounts of wealth taken away from society. Indeed, the apocalypse they fear is when society wakes to getting ripped off - $ 2 trillion at a time - so these klepto-capitalists need a place to hide when the apocalyptic anger of the masses emerges and their votes are worthless.
By the way, when the apocalypse nears, can the relatives come too? And their closest friends? And their friend's friends? There's room, right?
The wealthy who have taken and horded too much of society's wealth for themselves and keeping it out of reach from the rest of us with palaces in the sky, on mansion playgrounds on islands, cruise-ship sized yachts and Air Force One sized private planes are now burying their wealth in the ground to keep it out of our reach, in the hopes of outliving us the same way the roaches do.
With the $2 trillion in excess capital that the wealthy took away from society, they have to put that excess somewhere - why not bury it? No wonder business is up.
I wish we could replicate the equivalent of the "War of the Worlds" scare - a huge BOO! via trump's twitter account - the rest of us can sit back to enjoy watching these capitalists scamper down into their holes in the ground.
"the end could come any minute." Yes, people may wake up at any time for sales to dry up.
25
Their monies will be worth dirt if that event ever takes place; and they have no control and access to the vital natural resources not affected.
15
The rich have already cut themselves off. They dodge taxes, live in gated communities, fly in private jets from private terminals, vacation on remote islands, send their kids to private schools, get the medical treatment only they can afford, flout regulations and laws.
And yet having retreated from our world, they still run it, dictate to our political leaders, sway policies, pay a pittance in wages, dismantle our safety net, engage in military conflicts we don’t want or need for their benefit, shape our opinions thru control of the mass media.
The end of their world is nigh. But it won’t be nuclear or natural disasters. It will be angry mobs who ransack their palaces, just like the fate of every other grossly unequal society indifferent to the suffering of the masses.
79
You just described the French Revolution pretty well. It happened before and I agree with you, it will happen again.
15
I’ve been thinking the exact same thing. It will happen.
10
And the Russian revolution, too. I agree with both of you. If things keep up as they are going, it will happen again.
12
There is a great, almost-forgotten film "Safe" (1995) that is so amazingly relevant to this story.
Strange allergies and fevers result from many things, and likewise, there are many strange allergies and fevers from which one can struggle to be free. The modern world is like a human-made Amazon, filled with things and forms and environments normal to most of us, we natives. But not all of us.
4
I hope the apocalypse takes me first. No way I’m living underground like a rich rat.
37
Anyone thinking of joining the bunker people should rewatch the Twilight Zone. Especially the one where a city is destroyed and the only person left was in the bank vault and broke his glasses (he was in the vault doing what he loved best, reading) or the one where a false alarm caused every neighbor to beg to join the family who had a shelter and was told no. My father worked for the Navy in DC and had a paper pass he kept in the glove compartment that he was to place on the dash board and drive to WVA if there was a war. He said if a nuclear war started he would prefer to die at home instead of on the road to WVA.
27
the episode about the man who broke his glasses in the bank vault was so great and I remember it to this day. it was his wife I think that forbade him from reading at home. Classic Rod Sterling.
9
Well I know one thing for sure...
given the conservative mind thrives on fear....
those bunkers are wall to wall republicans.
34
"In the long run, we're all dead."
9
It warms my heart to know their money is being stol- spent so wisely.
37
That guy is never going to make the drive from Georgia to North Dakota. The interstates will be completely shut down. Before Katrina rolled into the Gulf Coast, it took 6 hours to get the 60 miles from New Orleans to Baton Rouge. That guy is delusional if he thinks he will make that trip, unless he gets a long head start.
54
I was chuckling when I read that, too. But I’m sure he has a “I’m special” mobile at the ready.
5
I suppose some of the bunker owners have private planes? Or helicopters?
It's as though these people are fantasizing about some kind of post-apocalyptic TV scenario where no one needs surgery, medicine, or a dentist.
How will the couple from Atlanta drive 1,300 miles to South Dakota after an emergency so grave, it requires sheltering underground? Do they seriously think the roads will be passable? Not to mention that the post-apocalyptic zombies along the way may not be too friendly.
What about when the food runs out? Will they grow more underground? I don't think so, unless the developers have set aside a couple dozen acres per development as a giant underground cavern-field, complete with soil and about a zillion sun lamps. Or will folks go aboveground to fight the zombies for radioactive food? What if there are giant irradiated ants (Them!)?
It's nice that a bunker cinema is connected to the power grid. What's going to happen when the grid isn't working anymore? Or will the zombies be running it?
What if the bunker suffers an infestation by giant ants?
Them! Them!
53
@Valerie, thanks for making me laugh until my side hurt!
5
I grew up on military bases during the Cold War: 1) I decided I'd rather go out sitting in the comfy chair with my cat, knitting, and bottle of wine, and 2) I developed a love of post-apocalyptic fiction. I don't actively seek it out anymore, but stumble across it now and then. Thanks for the reading and viewing suggestions!
33
@patricia
A great read:
"World Made By Hand" First of a quartet.
James Howard Kunstler
1
Alas Babylon is one of the classics. I reread it every now and again.
2
These folks might want to read Satre's play "No Exit."
23
Too hip for the room these people inhabit, James.
12
@JamesTypo: Sartre
2
If nuclear war is the fear, these bunkers are in the target's bulls-eye. Secret, they are not.
11
“A fool and his money soon go separate ways.”
“There’s a sucker born every minute.”
“Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.”
‘Nuff said.
16
You know what they say about a fool and his money, right?
18
Well, I now know where I'm going to get everything I need when Doomsday arrives.
10
This subject has been addressed and resolved long ago by the eminent German physicist and mathematician, Doctor Strangelove. lt's all on YouTube titled " Dr Strangelove, Survival Plan" and readily available for anyone who cares to look.
10
Those wealthy fools will arrive at their bunkers only to find out that the support staff will have taken complete control of the bunker. All of a sudden, these billionaires will discover that they are locked out of safety and will have to face the angry population without help. Why wouldn't a paid employee who knows all the access codes and every square inch of the bunker put the safety of his or her family before the interests of the wealthy. This nothing more than a false sense of security for fools with too much money!
61
@Scott Hieger
Absolutely correct!
4
'“I’m saving lives,” he said during a recent visit to his bunker, the exact location of which he insisted be kept under wraps.'
Check this address: 1347 Gold Rd, Glasco, KS 67445
Google Maps notes that the Survival Condo is open 24 hours a day. And has 23 reviews, evidently from people who bothered to drive out to the place.
Finally, Mr. Hall's Survival Condo has a website with pics and more info. It just doesn't provide the address, but then you already know.
40
@A Faerber Thanks for posting this! I love the pictures and the details. Imagine -- the world is ending and these folks will have a dishwasher and big-screen LED TVs in every room.
3
Great. Kill everybody else that doesn’t agree with you, whopeee I survived?
Dr. Strangelove!
5
Dr. Strangelove has come to life.
7
Love the guy who thinks a 26-hour drive to his bunker is a Plan when the excremental hits the fan. Buddy, you won't get two blocks. Your wealth, your paper money, your gold ingots – all will be worthless.
45
@Kenneth Miles Radioactive, actually.
2
Like a gun, only effective if ever present when needed. For bunkers with "doors that cap the entire operation weigh 16 tons, and close behind with a booming slam" those escaping chaos best be there before that door is closed for I doubt all your huffing and buffing at those inside will they open to let you in!!
9
Can the aliens just come and take us over already?
23
The Living will envy the Dead.
10
Bring out the pitchforks!
M
8
Knew I should've read the rest of the article before shooting off a comment...
Besides the dog park...
This:
"...Because few banks issue loans for bunkers...
I say this is red-lining of the worst kind, and Liz should blast these scoundrels (bank CEOs, not bunker-buyers) out of their bunkers (corner offices, not bunkers)...
That didn't come out right...
8
I'm more interested in the logistics:
* How much water would a family of 5 need for 1, 2 or 3 years for washing, laundry, dishes, flushing, drinking. Where do you store it? Is it gravity-fed or fed pump? If by pump, is there a manual pump you can use if the electric pump goes down?
* Where does the toilet waste-water go?
* There were kennels in the pictures. How much dog food do you bring with you?
* Is there a medical room? Or a morgue? Or a jail cell for a community?
* In a community of 80, how would you govern yourselves?
* Is there an emergency staircase in case the power goes out and the elevator goes out.
* Where would 6 months, or three years, of trash go?
* How does air get filtered and recirculated?
* Can you actually grow anything down there? What would it be? How much energy and resources would it take to grow a single carrot. Would it be worth it?
* Smoking or non-smoking?
119
Seed banks? Equipment to survive on the surface afterwards including heavy machinery to farm, clear away debris etc. Healthy, strong, young adults capable of hard work to rebuild. Educational system so they know how to rebuild. The list goes on and on.
8
Kudos Chet on the elevator shot. I can't stop laughing.
8
When climate change arrives in full force and hundreds of millions are displaced, the ultra wealthy will hide themselves away from the suffering they wrought. How predictably cowardly.
21
What a charming thought! The earth will be repopulated by the one per cent.
12
@Peter Aretin
It’s the Libertarian ethos of Wealth Supremacy. They believe their wealth proves their superiority and they deserve to remake the world in their own image, more specifically, in Ayn Rand’s image.
4
The real “survivalists” are the scientists, humanitarians, and activists working every day with their fellow human beings and the environment to nurture, educate and heal. It’s work, in other words, that ensures the survival of the planet a life sustaining place.
These odious bunker people, on the other hand, are greedy monsters who selfishly indulge their fears and fantasies and do nothing but take from others in the here and now while preparing to take and horde even more if they’re the last people on Earth. I’m pretty sure the viruses, bacteria, rats and cockroaches will find them in their bunkers and happily become the ultimate bunker landlords.
46
"If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket." (LBJ)
White fear works in much the same way.
9
“Alexa! Turn on the radiation-filtering air conditioner! Alexa? Hello? Anyone know how to work a thermostat?....”
21
Before plunking down my hard-scammed down payment, need to know two things:
1. Does the place allow dogs
2. If so, can the door be fitted with a doggie-door, in case my hound is stuck outside chasing wind turbines when the big one hits and has to get back in quick
For clarity, pushing aside a two-ton steel flap would be the pooch's problem...
I'd have done what I could...
PS
I guess this is a...
(drumroll)
...Y2020 crisis
PPS
One more question:
Is it deep enough that I can slink off to Canada or New Zealand via the walk-out basement, if things get really dicey here
Actually two:
If not, could I put in an infinity pool that'd provide the same safe exit
8
What happens when the coming disaster prevents survival condo owners from traveling to their bunkers?
7
It’s the early sixties and I’m a young school kid growing up in suburban Philadelphia, split level houses as far as the eye can see. A few of the more well to do neighbors were taking the nuclear threat seriously and building underground fallout shelters in their backyards. My parents did not appear to take it as seriously. In fact, I can still hear my mother saying she preferred being at ground zero to a post apocalyptic existence. Nervous and frightened, I asked each of my playmates with fallout shelters whether they would make an exception for me and open the door if I came knocking after the nukes started to fall. Each replied with a resounding “No!”.
Panicked, I went to my parents. “What will we do? We’re doomed!” In their wisdom, they took me to the dark, dingy crawl space of our split level, just off the family room, a place I always feared was full of spiders. It had a single 40 watt light with a pull string switch and light so dim it didn’t even reach the far recesses of the space. My father assured me that this was my fallout shelter and I would be perfectly safe in case of a nuclear attack. I was given two cans of Campbell’s soup, my favorites, chicken noodle and cream of mushroom for sustenance and a flashlight in case power was lost. I ventured thee or four feet into the crawl space where I stored my supplies, never again concerned about surviving the nuclear winter. I believe the cans of soup and flashlight are still there.
46
Unfortunately, the need for these shelters is probably great now than it was in the 1950s.
1
There was no EPA in 1967. And regardless, the military doesn’t follow any environmental laws, even today. So “yes please,” let me pay millions for one of the those former nuclear missile storage facilities. Hopefully the home inspection pro I hire will have a Geiger counter.
11
@ClydeS
The military doesn’t follow any environmental laws, even today? That’s untrue. They spend millions each year cleaning their pollution because laws say they must.
3
We are fairly close to an old Silo. There were some problems there and the military paid for the testing and remediation.
2
I’ve visited one of the old silos in Colorado that now houses a company that I used to calibrate a meter... really cool and scary at the same time
2
Life is too short to care about the end of the world. Historically a way religious and pseudo scientific hucksters try to gain power and control over their believers.
2
$2,600 a month condo fee to live among the praire dogs in South Dakota? Let me think on that one.
9
Why would anyone want to survive an apocalypse?
33
Other commenters have pointed out a hundred apocalypse results which render the bunker/isolated retreat idea a failure from the get-go. If these rich folks are so smart, why haven’t they recognized this fact on their own? Or maybe you don’t even need to be very smart to con the rich?
17
It's a great idea .... provided you are near said bunker when you hear the activation of the emergency broadcast service message that the missiles are headed our way. As Thomas Tusser once said, "a fool and his money are soon parted."
5
This librarian is hoping that the planners of these deluxe bunkers have created vast libraries for them. I'd need a good sci-fi collection to make it through Armageddon. And maybe some self-help books along with some prepper guides for rebuilding when it's safe to re-emerge on the surface.
6
So, these people are building survival condos in missile silos that the Russians may still be targeting? Hmmm.
As others have said, it's a shame that these people can't be bothered to work to prevent sources of environmental or nuclear apocalypse. If those come, the survivors will truly end up envying the dead.
14
If P.T. Barnum we’re alive, he’s be selling survival condos.
How is it that the Trump Organization isn’t one of the leaders in this paranoia industry?
13
Dooms Day preparations began long long back. It has spread like slow poison. Religious hatred and inter religious conflicts have already wiped out millions globally.
Terrorists are having a variety of names and trying their best to wipe out innocents on minute to minute basis globally.
Other types of hatred have wiped out a million or so people globally. Natural calamities have wiped out millions over a period of time.
Our life style has made our lives miserable. Our mistakes have contributed to the grave global warming problem, which is endless. Do we really need some other disaster to wipe us out ? That’s also possible if some mad heads of the governments indulge in it.
Living in the Utopian world like bunkers doesn’t help then. God save the mankind.
3
"The Shelter" is episode 68 of The Twilight Zone. It originally aired on September 29, 1961.
It's a typical evening in a suburban community, at the home of physician Bill Stockton, who he enjoys a birthday party being thrown for him by his wife Grace and their son Paul.
Also at the party are a group a of close-knit group of Bill's long-time friends, neighbors and their children.
Everyone is friendly and jovial, even when mention is made of Bill's late-night work on a fallout shelter which he has built in his basement.
Suddenly, a Civil Defense announcement overheard by son Paul is made that unidentified objects have been detected heading for the United States.
In these times, everybody knows what that means: nuclear attack.
As panic ensues, the doctor locks himself and his family into his shelter. The same group of friends becomes hysterical and now wants to occupy the shelter. All of the previous cordiality is now replaced with soaring desperation; hostility, searing racism, nativism, and other suppressed emotions boil to the surface.
The shelter has sufficient air, provisions, and space for only three people (the Stocktons ).
The once-friendly neighbors do not accept this and break down the door.
Just then, a final Civil Defense broadcast announces that the objects have been identified as harmless satellites and that no danger is present.
The neighbors apologize for their behavior; yet Stockton wonders if they have destroyed each other without a bomb.
26
@Howard G And "The Shelter" figured prominently as part of the storyline in the recent Twilight Zone play in London - and without any retro feel either, I might add.
9
It would be much less expensive to just play Fallout.
8
I don't know about all this... A lot of the comments knock serious holes in the concept. And nobody even mentioned getting stuck on the elevator halfway down when the lights go out.
My understanding is that the Haves already bought farms in New Zealand and they keep their jets all ready to go if the world shows signs of coming to an end. Naturally, they have to provide ample space in NZ for the pilot, the pilot's family, the security, the security's family, at least two good lawyers and their families. In other words, it takes a village to save a billionaire.
So, if you are going to live in a hole in the ground, how many others do you need to provide for too?
Incidentally, the biggest apocalypse-level event we should really worry about is a coronal mass ejection that fries the electrical grid worldwide. That includes the transmission lines from anywhere to anywhere, plus all electronics. A CME event equivalent to the Carrington Event in 1859, which was largely undetected to any but the telegraph operators, and people admiring the spectacular aurorae worldwide, would kick us back to the stone age in about two days. A CME is something to worry about.
14
@PJTramdack
The New Zealanders probably wouldn't let them land. Just more people to take care of, and not even citizens.
5
In the event this cataclysmic event ever happens. The angry hordes can exact vengeance on these underground condo developments by destroying the wind turbines and solar arrays, finding and destroying the air ventilation ports, disrupting their diesel supply and whatever other mayhem they can perpetrate. That'll fix 'em.
14
Time to re write the last sentence in the Star Spangled Banner to: "And the home...of the...Braaaave, and a bunch of scaredy cats"
6
So not only do these doomsday preppers feel they will survive the apocalypse, they will survive it surrounded by all their luxury and high end goods!
Good luck with that....
20
@Scott
These doomsday preppers sound very much like Egyptian pharaohs who thought they could take all their high end goods into the afterworld with them, so they built these impenetrable tombs and had themselves, their servants, cats, etc. all mummified.
1
Any of these gazillionaires recall the Biosphere 2 project? The one that was built to sustain people indefinitely with a totally enclosed system having renewable air, water, and food?
It failed, and it had more thought and resources behind it than any of these disaster condos.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosphere_2
22
@ridgeguy
The military has been selling catastrophic but survivable mass death for 3 generations now, so why shouldn't present day $$ survivalists believe they can survive? The Blind leading the Blind.
3
Money clearly does not buy peace of mind.
12
I can't imagine a fate worse than sharing a post-apocalyptic world with these people.
74
It’s a play by JP Sartre called No Exit.
2
If a millionaire doesn’t know what to do with his money, why not make a sucker out of him?
18
Within two months a leader will emerge who devises a harsh penal system to handle problems like peeing in the pool.
You can escape the apocalypse, but you can't escape humanity if your escape plan involves a condo complex.
85
With these 1.3 million price tag i am positive all these people who own one have not paid taxes in years.
11
If that one elevator breaks down, are these folks buried underground? There would be a certain irony to that.
20
@bellboy
Yes, I’m sure you could write a whatever could go wrong will go wrong screenplay that would be very suspenseful. I mean it all sounds like fiction anyway, doesn’t it?
“...Then there are the swimming pool, saunas and movie theater.”
Hmm, let’s see. Nuclear holocaust, climate change, or water shortage has wiped out much of humanity.” Meanwhile, below the surface, rich folk frolic in some latter-day Galt’s Gulch, carefully planning their days to balance pool time with sauna sessions. (Don’t miss the movie on the Lido Deck!)
To what end, exactly?
47
@Hans Eckardt ... old age?
1
If in fact, ‘the end could come @ any time’ and you are physically not there7/24/365...how exactly does this bet pay off??
17
When their supplies start to run out, how long before they start killing each other to capture their neighbors' supplies? If this is the ultimate Darwinian survival of the fittest, it makes you wonder what "fit" means.
31
@Steve: yes, interesting that there’s a weapon cache.
5
The primary question is worst case, EMP and all where nothing works, etc., how do you get to the bunker?
9
Looks like they didn't hire architects, interior designers, or lighting designers. Just seeing pictures of those rooms made me claustrophobic and depressed. And assuming your underground lair did its job (doubtful), you'd emerge eventually, and then you'd be in Nebraska, Kansas, or South Dakota. Ummm... no thanks.
35
I'm gobsmacked over this article. What a sad state of affairs we are in and these people head for their hills because they have enough money to buy their way into what they think is safety from the very scenario they helped create. I do hope they enjoy their poolside view of each other..forever.
35
Reminds me of Communist Albania. The paranoid dictator Hoxha build over 900 000 bunkers all over the country at a cost of 100k each while impoverishing the 2million habitants of the country. At that price, each family would have had a luxurious villa to live in. Instead the landscape is littered with concrete bunkers that serve no purpose today. The dictator died, the USA never came to invade the paranoid little dictator, it was just a huge waste to f resources. But it’s not just Albania, look at old Egyptian pyramids or the Great Wall of China. They still stand as a reminder of human foolishness , we think we are going to live forever, it’s hard to accept our own demise, yet it’s just around the corner, we are here for just a little time, so enjoy it . Death might be a relief in comparison to living with constant fear from it.
39
@Memento mori Your comment reminds me of a passage in Hebrews 2:15 "...deliver those who for the fear of death were doomed to slavery all their lives."Except a bunker won't. People who need a bunker and a shooting range will behave in what manner when things get bad for them and their neighbors have the keys to "survival"?
2
Pyramids are not bunkers.
2
If our centralized systems fail, the pampered millionaire in the bunker condo doesn't win. The Amish win.
66
Personally, if the nuclear exchanges ever got started, I would prefer to be at ground zero, because what would be left would be rather inhospitable.
But if you own such a survival condo, if a truly apocalyptic event were to occur, all the standard communication systems we now use would likely be down or destroyed. If you have no phone, no internet, no content providers, what do you do with all the free time you would have on your hands? What, no golf?
And when you do finally poke your head above ground, what then? Who remembers where we parked the car?
369
@Joe From Boston
I read *a lot* of Cold War history. Something that vexed the planners was that you couldn't really count on anyone to keep on keeping on if it seemed like nuclear war was imminent. Businesses did all sorts of things like trying to insure they could make payroll, the post office had change of address cards for displaced people. Government planners realized that they couldn't replicate a capitalist society quickly after the bombs fall, hence we lose as our ideology loses. They also realized that any survivors would probably be psychologically unable to function in a post nuclear exchange world.
48
@Joe From Boston
Never mind the fifteen floors of stairs you’d have to climb to poke your head out and breathe that radioactive air - that’s if, of course, you could open those one ton doors with all the power gone. The future awaits!
75
@Joe From Boston I'm with you Joe. I'd take a bunch of bills and swill them down with my favorite Pinto Noir.
25
"But what really sets the development apart, in his view, is its ability to survive the apocalypse..." ha ha. that's a great lead.
10
@Dean S. Scott
Surviving the apocalypse -- in order to live in the apocalypse? Thanks, but no thanks.
9
When the food runs out, the residents will start eating each other. Money doesn't' guarantee civility.
28
No bunker will save them. There will be no world left. It kind of shows how unconnected from reality they really are.
Once we pass a certain point the feedback loops will kick in. Methane from methane hydrates in permafrost and ocean floors, lack of reflective ice surface, increased droughts and fires that destroy forests.
A few years in a miserable hole is what they will get with their money.
23
Seeing those TV screens in all the residences that mimic windows, with video feeds from outside the entombed facility, makes me feel claustrophobic just thinking about.
18
Wow. This is a bit unsettling. It also doesn’t make a lot of sense. Not sure who is going to keep this all operational if Armageddon occurs. Do you actually expect your wind gen to just be left alone? Do you not realize that the gazillion people who worked on constructing these underground bunker condos know where they are as well as do their family and friends?
There’s quite a difference between this and preparedness. Being prepared for disasters such as hurricanes, wildfires, floods or earthquakes is a positive thing. The more people who are able to care for their family in case of a disaster makes the job of FEMA, the Red Cross and others easier. Having food, water, emergency lighting, heating, prescription meds required, first aid supplies and the like on hand is a positive action. Being able to help neighbors and friends as well is a good thing. Spending millions to be able to seal yourself off in a hole in the ground with your fellow millionaires and wait for the unwashed masses above to die off doesn’t seem like a healthy way to approach the world’s problems to me.
113
Presumably the pump in Fox News.
3
PT Barnum said it best, "There is a sucker born every minute."
24
P. T. Barnum was right!
9
I’m surprised the bunker scam isn’t a trump enterprise.
41
I heard Jeffrey Epstein actually escaped and is now leaving in one of these with 50 underaged girls starting a new society of superior minds.
22
@PW
You have it exactly right.
3
@PW, El Chapo is big into subterranean living as well. Someone better check his cell, the two may be chilling together somewhere deep underground.
4
When the world collapses the rich will finally be able to spend all their time with the only two things they truly love - themselves and their money. Enjoy!
(BTW: Your money will be as absolutely worthless)
49
I guess Kiki won't be using the US interstate system, given that it was built by big government, to get to her bunker. (Fortitude ranch has "aircraft and fuel" to fly its residents to their locations.)
10
LOL. Ran across this Tshirt graphic today out of coincidence. Very appropos...and funny.
https://raisedbywolves.us/collections/tees/products/bunker-tee?variant=13056109412451
3
There is a very thin veneer of 'society' and 'civilization' that will quickly vanish when we get a significant event. We've already seen this with a super-storms hit: people feel they are justified in breaking into stores for food.
It's a small step from there to set up an armed checkpoint on the highway to intercept food and medicines or to raid a drug store.
Those that think otherwise are deluding themselves.
So, why not prepare? It gives you a buffer against such events - time to let civilization recover. if it ever does.
One must also be prepared for the monetary system to collapse, and have instead 'wampum' to trade for necessities. Ammo is particularly good wampum, btw.
4
@Cal Page No, better than 'wampum' is whiskey. You can use it to trade for anything.
6
Working in a food bank recently, I learned that canned goods don't last as long as you think they will. They do go bad, and you'd probably get sick of eating them long before you run out. So what are you going to eat underground while waiting for the human pandemonium to end or the radioactivity to subside? So what if you have a swimming pool and a best of Netflix collection?
11
Beans and the like. But then you'd need a good ventilation system :-)
9
I saw a tv show about the folks who are living on large properties in Idaho and Eastern Oregon and Washington state with regular houses plus bunkers loaded with survival gear and, yes, armories of weapons that would make the Enterprise (Star Trek version) envious. The interesting thing is that most of these folks are ex-military, former police and firefighters, EMTs and nurses. It seems clear that they have been traumatized by their careers and are paranoid. I feel sorry for them but if they want to spend thousands of dollars on industrial size food dehydrators in the vain hope that they can survive forever, more power to them, as long as they stay in their bunkers.
32
'There is so much to get done, he said, and the end could come any minute.'
Maybe for Mr. Hall but not for anyone else!
3
These billionaires should be working endlessly to elect officials that will address climate change, and reduce emissions.
Nobody is going to survive, otherwise.
600
The entire Solar Punk literary genre pokes fun at this folly by assigning grim, yet believable fates to those who went underground.
9
Seems like they know something we don’t.
3
@Dr. M These billionaires should be working endlessly to elect officials that will address climate change, and reduce emissions. .... They don't care about you or society.... they care about only themselves...
28
How do they anticipate treating any cardiac event they may suffer? Stroke? Depression due to lack of sunlight ? Have they never read The masque of the red death? You can never beat Death.
9
Down there, they'll get antsy inside of a few weeks and start fighting among themselves. Then the 911 calls will start coming in. Ignore them.
7
The only affordable survival, bunker option is Fortitude Ranch, which costs about $1,000/year to be a member. The ones in the article are limited to millionaires. Its not a fancy facility, and it has shallow, basement shelters--but you can afford to belong there, and it doubles as a recreational facility--can go there to hike and vacation, spend the night for free.
With Trump in charge, all of us should already be living in fallout shelters.
Let’s make a start by shelving the Wall, building 100,000 of them
and giving them away via a lottery.
7
Yes, excellent point, fear sure does sell. And as another great American businessman said "there is a sucker born every minute". I always wonder with these survivalist types, what they do after it is all "over"? Can't imagine they'd be great company.
7
Knock, knock.
Who's there?
2000 heavily armed hungry peasants.
Uh, oh.
Do these people really think they're going to just stay underground until everything "blows over?"
As I love to ask my prepper friends laying in fuel for their generator, when the ugly armed hordes finally make it to our neighborhood, which house is going to go down first - the one with the lights on.
19
If this is what 'survival of the fittest' is Herbert Spencer was wrong.
5
I'm headed to my fully-stocked wine bunker with a cork puller and the last plastic straw on earth.
51
@MCV207 Finally an excuse to drink myself to death.
9
Same people that do cryonics probably, anti human
3
In some ways, this is the logical conclusion of a society built around individual wealth and self-preservation. But if it really comes to this, what kind of Earth will the lucky few have left to inhabit?
We need each other and our beloved Earth.
26
Required reading for people sitting in their bunkers waiting for the end to come: "A Is for Asteroids, Z Is for Zombies: A Bedtime Book about the Coming Apocalypse."
http://www.asteroidszombies.com/
3
All this means if postponing the inevitable. You destroy precious Mother Earth and you die. All this does is place you where you want that event to happen. Perhaps in the pool or watching great TV re-runs from a world long destroyed by human idiocy.
10
Quick, let's fake an apocalypse!
15
We’ll pry you out like lobsters.
21
As one nuclear physicist said, “ Bunkers are very efficient. If it’s a million degrees outside, it’ll most likely be about 3000 degrees inside. Anyone have a baster handy?
20
Here's hoping they panic with their President, rush in and lock the doors behind them, leaving the rest of us to rethink carbon, birth control, water, species trees and food.
47
Well I guess on the upside buried so far down in the earth you perhaps can escape the heat of the day getting worse by climate change. Probably want to be worried that someone or group does not off the guard and lock the silo until those inside perish. Yuk... stinky hole in the ground.
4
How silly. I am 65, a Type I Diabetic and have another Autoimmune disease and I don't want to live in a post apocalyptic world.
If its nuclear I'll just go and sit under a tree and wait to die, any thing else I'll die when my supply of unrefrigerated insulin loses its effectiveness.
11
I am no visionary. However, it seems to me that believing in the bunkers is a self-fulfilling prophecy because those who choose to invest in an apocalyptic future will fail to invest in seeking solutions which avoid an apocalypse.
When I was in college 40 years ago, the world debate was whether capitalism versus communism could deliver solutions to human problems such as scarcity, hunger, disease, and the like. Now, it seems the wealthy have no faith that either system will solve the world’s problems.
I’d rather believe in a scenario where hope and faith brings about changes to make the world better. The alternative view seems implausible, that from the ashes, humanity will be rebuilt by those who see the worst in man-kind. That is a world I hope my descendants never see.
400
@Ben
If the Russian maps are old, these survivalists will be the first to go.
22
@Ben. Recently I've been wondering if the popularity of post apocalyptic sci fi is also a self fulfilling prophecy...
13
@ Ben -I am reminded of the movie "On the Beach" (see wikipedia). Building a bunker is sending a message. Beyond spending money selfishly, though bunker businesses make out, and there are jobs, I read this as giving up, "throwing in the towel". It's squeezing out the last bit of luxury for oneself. This says one has no faith that we will survive, "but I will", the ostrich approach.
12
In these survivalists' fantasies, one of Putin's new nuclear-powered missiles streaks across the ocean in a surprise attack, and America gets 5 minutes (if that) to duck and cover before being incinerated. These guys pack the car — or even their helicopter — and head to Kansas, stopping for gas and burgers along the way? This must be the new way God tells you that you have way too much money.
But, zombies are a completely different story....
18
Yet another industry thriving under Trump, albeit deeply under.
8
Terry Pratchett's satirical writing happens in a city where they don't have firefighters, because if there's a bunch of people whose job and income relies on a supply of fires, anyone can see the obvious result.
This seems quite similar - so long as there's a ton of money in a constant stream of threats, the prepper companies will be well funded - and whaddya know, there it is, a threat, then a next threat!
4
Somewhere in some of modern mankind's schematic is the notion that roughing it out is noble and romantic. It ain't. You "bunkerites" will eventually run out of resources at which time you will either have to hunt (successfully), steal (successfully), scavenge (successfully) or cultivate (again, successfully). These are not activities you can merely visualize then actualize. There are prerequisites. Get any of it wrong and you might as well have stayed above-ground and taken your lumps with the rest of us...
19
No thanks. Remember the Morlocks and Elois? I wouldn’t leave the surface without a fight or at least a major effort to survive. Seems more sensible to put our efforts toward fixing climate change and nuclear proliferation that than this nonsense.
18
It requires a special kind of narcissism to even want to be among a small group of survivors of the collapse of civilisation.
718
Best comment so far.
39
@Christian Haesemeyer
Didn't Dr. Strangelove suggest from a bunker a 1:10 male to female ratio for purposes of repopulating the earth? Maybe that's some of the appeal of this.
24
@Christian Haesemeyer
In the bunker with the wood burning fireplace and the gourmet kitchen, where will the wood come from and freeze dried Food doesn’t really need a kitchen. In all these millionaire bunkers, i wonder where the help will stay.
66
I'd rather take my chances in the open air, radioactive fallout and all, than live in a cave with no windows. Plus, all the agoraphobic loonies will be safely stored away for the duration.
8
How reassuring to know that some critical things are still made in America ! ;)
3
Hate to break the bad news, but no one survives The End.
16
@Bun Mam The late Jim Morrison begs to differ.
2
Read "Wool" by Hugh Howey. Enough said.
5
@Claire
Not to overlook the coming sequel: " Fleeced."
12
Typical move by the wealthy.
Destroy the world around you, oppress the 99% with all manner of shenanigans, reap huge tax winfalls courtesy of the politicians you bought and paid for......
.... Then crawl into some hole for a generation and pretend you had nothing to do with world catastrophe... and declare yourself victims of circumstance.
152
@Chuck
Very very funny, and so true.
3
Off to the bunker races again. Make sure you pack in a bunch of firepower and don't get powder burns on your pinafore. I'll add a quote of George C. Scott's from "Dr. Strangelove" speaking to the President after the Russian"s doomsday devise goes off. Scott is worried the Ruskies have more underground survival space and says, "Mr. President, we cannot afford a mine shaft gap."
Also those old silo locations are well known to the Russians. In the event of a full exchange, the Russians may decide they want to take out the very rich and they'll know where you live.
18
‘A place for freedom’, says a resident, as she puts her home deep beneath the Earth in a bunker....
Irony thick as molasses.
39
I remember as a kid growing up in the 50's wrestling with my first moral dilemma. Would I let my friends into our families fallout shelter(we didn't have one) when the atom bombs started dropping? My list of who was in and who was out was quite fluid. "Survival porn" does seem like a good way to describe this mini-gold rush of survivalist fantasy. I think I'd rather take my chances on the outside trying to survive with the rabble, than be cooped up with people whose worldview is so paranoid and Hobbesian.
28
Sounds like El Cappo’s Super Max digs
3
Living in a windowless multistory underground bunker, they'll need air circulation or the accumulating CO2 will make it uninhabitable. This requires an ongoing source of power. Even assuming that doesn't fail, in a nuclear event, the ventilation system will draw down radioactive fallout and they will all die of gastrointestinal bleeding, aplastic anemia and skin sloughs like the rest of us. Only they'll do it underground.
77
"For now, if disaster strikes, the plan is for them to pack the car and make the roughly 26-hour drive from Georgia to South Dakota."
Thanks for the explosive laugh!
delusional much?
good luck getting that drive done as nuke winter (or whatever) sets in
I hope you have stock piled your own gas
undoubtedly they have - along with guns to keep the marauders at bay
and when they get there? is their frig stocked? or do they plan to stop at walmart to stock up on the way ?
191
@j I wonder how much toilet paper they have hoarded? If they plan on surviving long I hope it’s a bunch
22
@j
Nobody's going to be driving anywhere. Electromatic pulse kills all electrical stuff. I think.
2
I second your post. The scenarios for the 26 hours in the car are endless. i.e., EMP: the car won't start. Total collapse: the grid is DOWN? Was that in our planning?
Are people so busy building the bunker that they never watched 'The Walking Dead' or read Cormac McCarthy's 'The Road'? There will be no successful 26-hour road trip.
7
Nice tombs. Perhaps, in a couple thousand years, an Egyptian archaelogist can let them out.
130
Before you go shopping for a survivalist condo you might want to read Hugh Howey's Silo Series and see how well it worked out for humanity.
7
After the world ends and the dust has settled, the effete rich will peek out from their exclusive luxury bunkers, then realize that there’s no one left to pay to do their dirty work.
159
@John Kreese, as the radioactive dust settles, all will be settled: Humanity, wildlife, plant life, and welcome to another toxic Mars.
11
“If you can make people afraid, you can sell them all kinds of stuff,”
Reminds me of Tom Ridge, Homeland Security, 2003. ...duct tape and plastic sheeting to seal windows and doors in case of chemical attack....
Duct tape and plastic sheeting manufacturers mad a pile of money on those words.
46
And it goes without saying that these places are packed wall-to-wall with God knows what kind of firearms arsenals. These fools are more likely to kill each other with those than be killed from any threat above ground.
55
Who the heck wants to live in a post-apocalyptic dystopian hellscape populated solely by paranoid billionaires? No thanks, I'd rather go out with the rest of humanity.
379
Living in a post-apocolyotic dystopia would be better than the alternative, if one were to form.
Realistically, though, this is just another weekend house for those who can afford it.
28
This is why toothpicks and chewing gum were
Invented
5
And so the race called the Morlocks began...
15
This just a side note: For science fiction fans fascinated by this idea, read Wool by Hugh Howey. Great book about a civilization living underground because the outside has become too dangerous.
https://www.amazon.com/Wool-Hugh-Howey/dp/1476733953
2
It'll be nice down there when the desperate hordes disable that lovely windmill.
And hey, Tom: good luck on your 25 hour drive from Georgia to South Dakota. Hope you've got some full gas cans (fresh, gas, natch) and a lot of ammo. (PS: It's a long drive. You'll need a snack.*)
*Obscure movie reference at no charge.
30
They should be offered the first spots on the Golgafrincham Ark Fleet Ship B.
6
I'm working on a Super Glue Bomb that will land on the entrance to the silos, thus sealing the fate of the inhabitants. Those who believe they can survive massive climate change and/or a nuclear war will be shocked when Elon Musk and El Chapo use their tunnel boring technology to disrupt their ant colony solution and allow millions of refugee to flood in from high-risk zones. It
all goes to demonstrate that fear and loathing are inherent in the human condition...
6
One big issue, unless you live close by to a doomsday bunker, everyone in the area knows about the location and could be waiting for your arrival.
18
Living in one of these "luxury" bunkers for an extra year or two? I'd rather die with the peasants.
37
If you need a bunker with a door like that how long do you think the wind turbine is going to last?
23
Rich people are definitely not taxed enough.....
492
@Gabel
If this isn't the 'End Times' then why would so many wealthy people waste their money on 'Doomsday Bunkers'?
BTW, they are all going to wish that they died in a nuclear blast after WW3 starts, but don't tell them that, there's plenty of money to be made before the fireworks start.
Obviously, the rich 'smart money' people know something that the 'dumb money' doesn't.
Could it be because we printed gobs of money to 'save us' from the GFC in 2009 and they know exactly what those easy money policies will entail once the 'chickens come home to roost'? (Hint: The Greatest Depression you have ever seen.)
That's what happens when you run up the credit card past $22.5 trillion, and print money out of thin air.
Eventually, the 'magical' levitation routine has to end...
...I'm starting to think that somebody knows that their 'time's up.'
3
@Gabel Definitely laughed out loud at work while reading this comment
5
Indeed. I would love to have millions to sink into a bunker condo I would probably never use-I can’t imagine using it as a vacation home until the Apocalypse comes.
3
That waterslide is the most depressing thing I’ve ever seen
20
The most distressing part of this article was the interest received from members of the Saudi military. We have plenty of Americans with loads of cash they obviously cannot find a better use for. Don't sell to the enemy for the love of goodness.
13
By Dawn's Early Light, 1990 movie. Don't waste your money on preparedness. Love and cherish your family and just rise above this ugliness. Strength and Honor.
5
Siri, define capitalism:
“Millionaires and billionaires spending their hard earned money to survive an apocalypse instead of spending their money to avoid the apocalypse.”
272
@Austin Ouellette
Siri is going to define capitalism as 'greed.'
Period.
7
@Austin Ouellette I'd only quibble with the 'hard earned' part of what you wrote. Mostly the wealthy make money by simply by already having tons of it.
6
@Austin Ouellette - Coasting on the interest derived from your great-great-grandfather's railroad money, itself derived from the often terminal labor of Chinese peasants, the displacement/genocide of the native population, and state-sponsored land distribution schemes, is neither "earning" nor "hard."
3
Pray to your god that you die instantly with the first blast. Anything else will be a very cruel fate.
34
HILARIOUS! What happens after the worst happens and these "too much money - not enough sense" one percenters crawl out of their holes? It's gonna be Cormack McCarthy's "The Road" baby, and these idiots will all end up in some real survivalist's stew pot.
53
@Jason Shapiro. Lol. My thought exactly, those left on the surface can dig the rich out and eat them.
1
@Jason Shapiro :-) If only...
1
Many people are struggling to own a shelter of their own amidst numerous debt traps, some are quite unnecessary like huge college fee, which could have been cut drastically by the government and some the need of the hour such as home loan but the rich have thought out about a shelter, which they think will protect from eventual disaster. That’s how the income inequality depicts life.
7
These people need to read Level 7 (Mordecai Roshwald, 1959). Everyone safe underground dies. As well as everyone on the surface, of course, but the ones on the surface die quickly, whereas the ones underground die bit by bit, in anguish and in dystopian meltdowns.
The way to survive these things is not to build bunkers or buy vast tracts in New Zealand. It is to work and sacrifice, voting and taking action, thinking of others as well as yourself and your immediate family, to ensure that this apocalypse does not come to pass.
464
@Lise: Yes. This story made me think of the book The Road. Not a pleasant life.
16
Level 7. That's the first book I ever read at age 9. I still remember it. In the style of a diary. Very impactful
7
Once they are all "safe" underground, things up here for the sane will be fantastic.
I can't wait.
139
Sigh...
Living in a fantasy that you can survive forever cut off from the world around you is SO much easier than doing the hard work of solving the world's problems and building a better community around you.
For the sake of argument, in the setting of an apocalypse, is an underground bunker REALLY where you want to be? What happens when the food runs out? What happens when your guards and servants get hungrier than you? How long can you refresh the water in that pool of yours? Have you done research into medieval siege warfare of castles (fixed defensive points)? It rarely ends well unless the siege can be lifted by a relief army.
I'll put my efforts into re-localizing the economy where I live, getting to know (and hopefully trust) my neighbors, and doing things to make a resilient community. If this sounds better than living in a bunker, look into the Transition Towns Movement.
83
@IanC
The first thing that will happen is those who survive outside the bunkers.. will hunt the bunkers down, find them, and then blow them up. Those inside will die.
End of story.
Oh yeah.. they think they have cleverly hidden the bunkers where they can never be found.. but some of those who will be hunting down the bunkers will actually be the labor workers who toiled over their construction. They will barter said information for food and security.
24
@Chuck Actually, you don't have to blow them up. Just find all the doors. Bulldoze tons of debris against the larger doors and weld the smaller doors shut. End of story.
10
@Doug
Just find the air vents and block them.
2
So who is going to polish their boots and plant their vegetable once they emerge from their tombs?
"To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
time to be born, and a time to die;"
And, sooner or later, these folks will die just like the rest of us.
May they not rest in peace.
16
The rich can have their bunkers, their fake windows, and their lonely refuge; but the people who will survive the difficult life ahead are those who can work together, combine resources, and build non-violent communities.
144
@Sherry The difficulty of nuclear winter is unsurvivable. Trust me, I know my stuff. You don't want to 'survive' WW3.
Period.
3
Thank you NYT for some light reading! This was a mood enhancer when compared to the depressing state of our democracy.
49
@WhodaRock Who knew this subject could provide comic relief. I'll be smiling all morning.
2
...and none of these folks will ever need medications for chronic or psychological illnesses, or surgery for any number of situations
Where is the underground urgent care facility bunker?
What is to guarantee that there will be no bacteria, viruses, mold, or fungi to ward off or overcome in these dystopian luxury digs?
56
This is nothing new, as those that are my age, 74, can attest.
Same thing 50's, early 60s.
There are movies, Twilight Zone episodes, etc....
41
@Irate citizen
Dr. Strangelove. How to stop worrying and love the bomb.
10
This most resembles a luxury tomb, which is what it will surely be if a global apocalypse comes and the earth dries up and drowns in heat and pollution. As if they can keep out millions who are starving and desperate if we enter a Mad Max era. They will meet their dreaded end already buried. How stupid and oblivious the rich are.
195
Surviving bombs is easy.
Outliving a mass extinction is impossible.
Unless you plan to wait for evolution to restore the planet ... in a million years or so.
78
I like how they have a 'pool, pet park, and arcade' on ground level. Just in case the world doesn't end, people can walk their dogs and take a lap in the pool.
17
I wonder how active any of these folks are in promoting nuclear non-proliferation, if at all.
My guess would be that none of them are at all involved, and that in a way they are sort of hoping for a nuclear war in the sort of escapist schadenfreude of our modern wealthy. Normal people would hope to someday be rich, but when you are rich out of all proportion you've seen it all and you need to make up new things for yourself to need.
23
Any day now gamma rays from a supernova will reach Earth and we'll all be goners!
11
@Richard Cox
I missed that on Accuweather somehow.
14
No, the only thing that reaches earth from
Supernovae are neutrinos, and they pass straight through us.
1
@Richard Cox
Tease!
2
Anyone who believes they can ride out a civilization destroying catastrophe in a lightly constructed bunker with no air, water and power regeneration capacity is beyond delusional, they are saps and marks for cons and carnival barkers. A bunker has the survivability of a diesel submarine and not even a nuclear one. Once the food and water runs outs, there is no more utility in a bunker as it becomes nothing more than an expensive tomb. At most, a bunker might offer short-term survival measured in weeks or months but nothing more. Pandemics, fires, ice ages and gamma radiation will still be waiting top side when the rats come scurrying out looking for crumbs.
171
@American Akita Team
They will be the (over fed) meat the strong do eat.
10
And what happens when the air filters get clogged? The batteries lose charge capacity? The maintenance personnel run out of chlorine for the underground pool? How long do these people think they'll last in their bunkers?
And if the rich survive the apocalypse, what are they going to do when the bunker doors open? Lord it over the cockroaches? Will their bunker kids want to be entrepreneurs and search out survivors to form a market?
I don't understand the escapist way of thinking. The uber rich want to go to Mars, the regular rich want bunkers on earth, the rest of us can drown or roast. What on earth do they think they're going to do without society? What is the point of living when the world around you is dead? How long can you live only for yourself?
572
@Dannyritz
How long can you live only for yourself? Apparently forever, if you're sufficiently rich. They don't need no stinkin' peasants.
Although it might be entertaining to be a fly on the bunker wall when all those rich folks can't get good help because everyone else is either on the surface, or living in the bunker. None of those other rich bunker residents will have any interest in building a career in the service industry.
38
@Dannyritz: Perhaps some of them are already living "only for themselves." Trump and McConnell come to mind.
But as I write this I realize they would wither without having breathless groupies cheering them on. Some people need connection and others need an audience.
22
@Anne
The correct attribution and quote is the late Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, who once said that after a nuclear exchange, 'the living would envy the dead.'"
71
Vaguely amusing, vaguely depressing. The people most likely to be able to afford this kind of bolt-hole, i.e. the rich, are also most likely to cause the conditions in which it will be needed. Though I suppose really rich people are buying, like, offshore islands and the like.
I suppose the next article is going to be about the Pinkerton-style paramilitary units that these rich people will retain to protect them through post-disaster civil unrest? The Midwest is gun country, after all.
71
@Roarke They alteady have them..
6
This deluded belief that you can be free from any dependence on others, that our fates are not inextricably intertwined, and that it’s inevitably everyone for themselves pretty much explains Republican policies on climate change, universal health care, gun control, and other issues. The article says that people of all political persuasions subscribe to this mentality, but it’s clear which party is constantly exalting “freedom” as the transcendent virtue while decrying “socialism.”
131
Excellently put. Eckhart Tolle essentially says the same thing in “A New Earth.”
2
The best article ending I’ve ever read!
4
By far the biggest threat is all-out nuclear war. If that happened, mose people not in or near their bunker and not already dead would be unable to get there, as infrastructure would be destroyed and radiation pervasive. Those who get to their bunkers would emerge in months or years to a probably lawless world of depravation and ecosystem collapse. But they lived longer so they win!
332
@Tucson Geologist Ever seen Ellison's "A Boy and His Dog?" A must-watch.
16
@Thomas Payne yes, I have seen seen that movie. Love it!
3
I've got a submachine mounted at the entrance of my bunker in case someone tries to steal my baseball card collection.
If my gun misfires or jams, I've got my bunker boobie trapped to blow up the bunker, me, and my baseball cards.
50
@george eliot Thanks for the laugh!
6
@george eliot, Sorry, George, but that little pea shooter won't do the job. We recommend an M134 Minigun, plenty of ammo and a good supply of 12 volt AGM batteries.
3
Better move in now - when it hits the fan might there be somebody better armed between you and your $M tomb?
12
@T. Baione
In the US, that would be a given....
5
Survival shelters are temporary facilities. Eventually, things will be needed that can not be found in the shelter. Then, if there is no organized society from which to obtain what is needed, survival becomes unpredictable.
28
@Casual Observer They will have to send someone out of the vault to find a new water chip ;-)
4
Looks like Groundhog Day {again...}
6
It is so easy to get caught up in the survival at all costs mentality, but given the choice to live an extra week by eating my 23 lb cocker spaniel. I would choose to just leave the world a week earlier. What’s the point of surviving if everything you hold dear is gone?
265
@Ted Siebert
What if the shoe is on the other paw?
11
@Ted Siebert
Oh see "A Boy and His Dog (1975 film) " with a very young Don Johnson.
2
Man it’s a dog eat dog world , you eat that dog or he eats you. More efficient for him to eat you, he lives longer!
6
So it's the rich, saving themselves from the consequences of...the rich. That's rich.
749
@Jeremy
They are all going to wish that they died in a nuclear blast after WW3 starts, but don't tell them that, there's plenty of money to be made before the fireworks start.
Obviously, the rich 'smart money' people know something that the 'dumb money' doesn't.
Could it be because we printed gobs of money to 'save us' from the GFC in 2009 and they know exactly what those easy money policies will entail once the 'chickens come home to roost'? (Hint: The Greatest Depression you have ever seen.)
That's what happens when you run up the credit card past $22.5 trillion, and print money out of thin air.
Eventually, the 'magical' levitation routine has to end...
...I'm starting to think that somebody knows that their 'time's up.'
3
@Jeremy
Well played.
7
@Jeremy
They are as rich as they are because consumers are hooked on their junk that they force on us, and we love it. So we shouldn't be complaining.
It's a consumer addiction and they are the dealers.
Check out Switzerland's system!
1
If the "end" really did come, who would want to retreat to a bunker and be an underground prisoner until their end? That said, I believe the human race has another century to decide if it wants to survive. Depressing - all of it.
33
@Bill M Cheer up mate. The 12th and 13th century featured the Mongol invasions and the black death. Things are not as bleak as all that. If the world ends, keep some cyanide pills handy. Other than that - go out an buy yourself a nice dinner and bottle of wine and pet a dog and ride a horse and enjoy life. Everyone dies - it is only a question of how and when. "Why sit alone in your room.... life is a cabaret .... there are much worse things than dying in this life...regret is one of them.
14
Wanted to hear more from Professor Hoopes.
Have we seen this phenomenon on movie screens, or just hints?
Really got to (again) give it to Philip K. Dick for having his finger on the pulse of American psychoses. Please read his 1955 short story about keeping-up-with-the-nuclear-war-bomb-shelter-Jonses. For a review: https://philipkdickreview.wordpress.com/2014/05/26/foster-youre-dead/
9
After a nuclear war they’ll envy the dead.
268
@Hddvt
Wow. Very well said yes indeed.
8
If it gets that bad, you might as well give me a cyanide pill. Who wants to live in a concrete chamber locked away except for the other survivalist neighbors?
85
I feel unprepared having just a months supply of food packets as I get ready for the next hurricane. I need one of those isotope power plants of the Russians to run my refrigerator.
11
Ha. I have a propane-fueled generator for my home in the country. It won't run unless I get regular propane deliveries. Wonder how they're going to get diesel after the apocolypse? The local FS probably won't be delivering.
29
Should the earth be so scorched that people would need to live underground would likely also cause there to be no food or water available so how long can these subterranean dwellers expect to survive? Can the make their own food and water? How about oxygen? How about medical care? We are linked to others and the earth which provides for us. That tells you something important that is not related to this highly irrational endeavor this article highlights.
65
@David Newman
Technology has actually gotten pretty good at developing self-sufficient, mostly closed spaces. We wouldn't have submarines or manned space flights otherwise. Water seems to be covered by aquifers, food can be stocked for years and grown with hydroponics, and oxygen can be scrubbed.
It's an irrational endeavor for a bunch of other reasons, but the technical aspects are probably the most sound.
6
@Roarke
Few would have the skills and the means to make a successful go of it. Anything unpredictable could be the end of the endeavor.
9
@Roarke
Sure, with current top notch sophisticated technology, very limited survival could occur for months. Before starvation.
We're draining our aquifers.
Scrubbing oxygen requires power.
Hydroponics requires filtration, pumps, continual replacement of water, that goes into the food, all requiring power.
9
I'm not worried, I live near the 191st subway station in Washington Heights, NYC which is 180 feet below street level .....
49
@Vietnam Veteran
Yes, and you're less likely to get stuck down there with a Trump supporter.
60
@Al
My favorite comment.
11
@Al
Trump supporters are NOT welcome at that stop!
15