In the US, military bunkers in the event of an apocalypse are turned into luxury housing: buyers are thrilled

In recent decades, the US has been actively developing a new segment of the real estate market. Entrepreneurs buy former military bunkers and missile silos at auctions, turn them into luxury apartments with pools, cinemas, bars, and sell them for several million dollars. Customers include corporate executives, oil moguls, and senior officials who fear global disasters.

Photo: Survival Condo

Critics call such businessmen "doomsday investors" and believe that they earn on human fears. However, the popularity of such housing is only growing, writes The New York Timeswhose translation was prepared by the publication the Babel.

Concerns about the upcoming apocalypse spread in American society in the middle of the last century. In the midst of the Cold War, Americans built underground shelters in the event of a nuclear disaster, in the 2000 year they turned basements into shelter warehouses in case of the end of the world.

Wealthy people are still afraid of global cataclysms: heads and top managers of corporations, oil magnates, and high-ranking officials. That is why in recent years, personal disaster preparedness has become a multi-million dollar business. Its key players are bunker builders and real estate agents. Since the Cold War, underground military facilities have been scattered throughout the United States. Now they can be bought at auction and converted into luxury shelters for wealthy clients.

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One of the pioneers in this area was Larry Hall. For most of his life, he built secure information centers for contractors from the US Department of Defense. But after the attacks of 11 of September 2001 of the year in New York, competition in this market has grown significantly. Then he decided to go into the “bunker business” and bought a former military facility in Kansas - an underground mine for an Atlas-F nuclear-powered intercontinental missile. It was built in 1960, but after seven years it was sold at auction for three thousand dollars. In the 2008 year, Hall bought this mine for about 300 thousand and spent about 20 million more on its reconstruction. He recalls that banks were reluctant to give out loans for a “hole in the ground,” so he had to collect money from future customers during pre-sale preparation.

Now it is a luxury 15-storey residential complex Survival condolocated underground at a depth of more than 60 meters. Here are 12 apartments with high ceilings and spacious living rooms. On separate floors - a gym with pool and spa, cinema, library, bar, shooting gallery. The building is equipped with air filters in case of nuclear, chemical and biological threats. There are generators and turbines for autonomous power supply and large reserves of water. The price of an “apartment” in Survival Condo starts at 1,3 million dollars, and the monthly fee is about 2,6 thousand. According to Hall, when he put up these "apartments" for sale in 2011, they were sold out in just a few months.

Photo: Survival Condo

Except for the Hall, the exact location of the bunker is known only to the apartment owners. Outside it is surrounded by barbed wire, along the perimeter - armed security. You can only get inside through the 16-ton steel doors. Hall recently bought another former Kansas military bunker, three times the size of the first. Interested in his new project already outside the United States. Among potential buyers, according to Hall, there are high-ranking military leaders from Saudi Arabia who asked him to draw up drawings for a helipad and an underground mosque.

However, Hall now has serious competitors in this business. A Kansas couple, a former teacher, founded the company for the sale of converted rocket mines, which they call "twentieth-century castles." An underground bunker built by Avon Cosmetics CEO Girard Henderson is selling for 18 million dollars in Las Vegas, with a wood-burning fireplace and medieval-style kitchen. In Indiana, developer Robert Vichino turned a former bunker at the Vivos underground mansion, which, he said, "looks like a very comfortable four-star hotel." He recently bought another 575 of former military underground facilities and plans to expand his business.

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IT worker Tom purchased one of the “apartments” in the Vivos complex when he “became very worried, among other things, due to political unrest.” He asked reporters not to give his real name, because he was afraid of persecution on the Internet. Tom, like most customers in the “bunker business,” says that they are not united by ideology, but “the belief that global forces have made society more vulnerable to a major catastrophe.”

Such projects have many critics. One is John Hoops, professor of anthropology at the University of Kansas. He calls such businessmen "Doomsday Investors" trading in "hypermasculine survival fantasy" amid fear of an impending disaster.

“Fear sells even better than sex. If you can make people afraid, then you can sell them anything, including bunkers,” the professor noted.

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