The World's 9 Most Surreal Luxury Apocalypse Bunkers

18 September 2019

Have you made your reservations for the end of the world?

Rich people are finally waking up to the reality of climate change and/or the impending apocalypse, and what are they doing?

Instead of spending their millions on creating a better world for everyone, they're creating luxury apocalypse shelters! In recent years, doomsday real estate has become a booming, multimillion dollar business, fueled by the rising inevitability and human apathy towards climate change as well as fears of nuclear attacks, pandemics, natural disasters, economic collapse, and other calamities.

Of course, if you have money, you're automatically exempt from any and all disaster, even if you played a role in causing it and/or have the funds to help turn things around. It's easier to just feel very afraid than to actually act, after all.

As anthropology professor John Hawkes told The New York Times, "Fear sells even better than sex. If you can make people afraid, you can sell them all kinds of stuff, and that includes bunkers." So here are 8 of the world's most surreal and luxurious bunkers, so you can live out the end times in comfort.

This subterranean refuge was first created by the Soviets during the Cold War, but the luxury apocalypse bunker company Vivos is currently shaping it into an opulent shelter. When finished, it will be able to house 1,000 people, as well as a small zoo, a storage space, and a gene bank for preserving plants and animals in case of an extinction.
Of course, Vivos is a very American country (nobody loves apocalypses more than Americans), and there are already shelters available in South Dakota, Indiana, and elsewhere. In order to get into one of their luxury shelters, you have to go through a vetting process. Don't worry if you're not a Silicon Valley CEO, though: These compounds are seeking diversity, gender balance, and all sorts of skills, as even underground luxury bunkers need plumbers.
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Welcome to the condo at the end of the world.
This gigantic silo doomsday bunker is designed by Logic Integrations, Inc., and if you're looking for a safe space in the event of an apocalypse, you can have one floor in this subterranean luxury lodge for around $3 million. The 15-story structure, which was originally made for storing missiles, was purchased by the entrepreneur Larry Hall in 2008, and cost about $20 million to build. Inside, there's internet, high-tech appliances, a bar, a swimming pool, and yes, a shooting range, so you can rest, relax, and exercise your second amendment rights in style while knowing the rest of the world is ending just above your head.
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At 323,000 square feet, the Oppidium takes the cake for the world's largest apocalypse shelter. But it's not only underground: there's also an above-ground compound where the super-rich and super-paranoid can feel safe knowing they're just steps away from their underground refuge.
The complex contains a spa, swimming pool, library, offices, customizable luxury apartments, and a conference room (because even the apocalypse can't destroy capitalism), and has been described by its founder, Jakub Zamrazil, as a "life-assurance solution."
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Upstate New York's finest "survival habitat" combines rustic charm with very modern paranoia. Built to withstand a direct nuclear hit, this bunker has walls made of three inch strips of concrete and fortified with stainless steel mesh. Inside, you'll find homey nature-inspired architecture, a jacuzzi, and a nine-foot-tall support tower designed to absorb the impact of any and all of North Korea's rockets.
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This industrial, chic Polish bunker may look like a relatively normal if pretentious house, but with a click of a button, you can summon a massive wall panels that block out the windows, and thick courtyard walls that slide around the house to fortify it in case of a zombie attack or another kind of disaster. Designed by Robert Konieczny, the house is at once completely exposed to the outside world and prepared to shut it out at a moment's notice.
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I'm willing to bet my life on the fact that Post Malone is not the only celebrity to have built an apocalypse shelter underneath his mansion, but his has been one of the most widely publicized, likely because the pop star has been so open about it.
"I'm just buying a place out in the sticks. I'm building it underground. It's going to be fun until the world ends. But whenever the world ends, it's going to be functional," Posty told Rolling Stone. Apparently, the $3 million home will have 30 bunk beds, a wine cellar, a recording studio, and plenty of guns.
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This cavernous space once held a hydrogen bomb, and now it's a glorified bomb shelter. Inhabited by the Peden family, who also run a business that helps other families develop their own underground shelters, the castle rests 10-15 feet underground, and its inhabitants can rest easy knowing that they'll be some of the only people left alive in the case of mass ecological destruction, nuclear attack, and the like.
It's ironic that so many of these shelters are designed to protect people from a nuclear attack—a very hypothetical and unlikely occurrence—but not many have been created in direct response to the climate crisis, which will decimate us all unless we mobilize on a mass scale. Surely, though, once the super rich really wake up to the reality of climate change, they'll waste no time in building their own synthetic underground paradises, from which they can offer their thoughts and prayers as refugees flee the latest wildfire, flood, or hurricane-bomb hybrid.
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Thankfully, not all apocalypse shelters are designed for humans.
Way up north, amidst the permafrost, deep inside an abandoned coal mine, there's a little vault that contains world's largest collection of plant diversity. Built to withstand time and all forms of disaster, the vault holds over a million plant samples, and is intended to preserve as much of the world's natural diversity as possible, no matter what.
While there are many seed banks around the world, many are easily destroyed by wars or natural disasters, whereas this one was made to be indestructible (even though it hasn't proven entirely immune to melting ice and rain).
Still, if you're panicking about mass extinction and the loss of plant life that humans have caused, know that if we do manage to wipe out the majority of our natural world—as we're on track to do—at least when the majority of people die off, whoever is left will have the ability to begin again.
Let's hope we never see that day, though. All this has been pretty dismal, but the truth is, human beings and the Earth itself have been undergoing massive transitions and initiating huge changes since we materialized into existence. Change is integral to life, and though we face terrible effects from climate change as well as looming nuclear war, there's no point in obsessing over the end of the world without at least trying to secure a better future, as impossible and faraway as it may seem. Of course, that will probably require staying aboveground.
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