The High-Net-Worth Prepper: How the Elite Are Financing Multi-Million Dollar Survival Bunkers

There’s a tiny, nearly imperceptible moment when you realize that the end of the world has become a goal. Looking at a glossy brochure that promises underground pools, movie rooms, and a general store stocked to outlast civilization while standing outside a repurposed Cold War missile silo in rural Kansas, it suddenly occurs to me that someone actually purchased this. Actually, a number of people. They also paid millions.

Conspiracy theorists and off-grid homesteaders are not driving the booming bunker industry. Hedge fund managers, tech executives, and those who already own superyachts but still feel vulnerable are the clients reshaping this market. They are high-net-worth preppers, as the financial community refers to them, and they are spending at a level that would have seemed ridiculous even ten years ago.

The founder and CEO of Vivos, a business that constructs and oversees upscale shelters in several nations, Robert Vicino, puts it simply. The outdated perception of a bunker—gray walls, metal cots, and a submarine-like atmosphere—is complete.

He claims that “Mankind cannot survive long-term in such a Spartan, bleak environment,” and he has based his entire business strategy on this conviction. Vivos Europa One, his flagship European project, is located inside a 76-acre former Soviet munitions facility carved out of solid bedrock in Rothenstein, Germany.

It is resistant to biological attacks, direct plane crashes, and nuclear explosions. There are 34 private apartments, ranging in size from 2,500 square feet, restaurants, a theater, a coffee shop, and a tram system that runs throughout the complex. Vicino makes a half-serious suggestion that owners hire the same designers who outfitted their actual vessels, comparing the individual units to underground yachts.

It sounds ridiculous, and it is in certain respects. Beneath the excess, however, is a true market logic. Developer Larry Hall presents his offering as a real estate investment rather than a fear-driven expense. The Survival Condo Project in Kansas was built inside two decommissioned Atlas missile silos that were originally built by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. “Our clients are sold on the unique advantage of having a luxury second home that also happens to be a nuclear hardened bunker,” according to him.

The cost of a full-floor home is approximately $3 million. The starting price of the two-story penthouse is $4.5 million. Nine feet of reinforced concrete make up the walls. There is a theater, a library, a bar, and a pool. Residents would be required to work four hours a day during a declared emergency. It’s basically a very safe second home the rest of the time.

Sales figures speak for themselves. According to Gary Lynch, general manager of the Texas-based Rising S Company, sales of their custom underground bunkers increased by 700% in 2016 compared to the previous year, and overall sales increased by 300% just after the US presidential election. These purchases are motivated by anxiety that goes beyond politics.

It is one of the few things that transcends ideological boundaries. Vicino claims that during that time, Vivos sold out of spaces in their community shelters and attracted a lot of interest from both liberals and conservatives.

What’s intriguing—and a little unsettling—is how the extremely wealthy now express this anxiety with such casualness. Douglas Rushkoff, a media theorist, was asked to talk about the future of technology at a private conference for ultra-wealthy investors in the desert. Instead, he discovered a group of billionaires asking where they should construct their bunkers in the same lighthearted manner that they might use to talk about cryptocurrencies. New Zealand or Alaska? Is there an independent air supply?

He later wrote that it was a window into a group of people who have quietly come to the conclusion that disaster is imminent and that individual escape, rather than group prevention, is the best course of action. “They’re leaving a trail of poverty, and worse, in their wake,” he said. “They want to escape before it catches up with them.”

Atlas Survival Shelters’ Ron Hubbard, who refers to his business as the “Amazon of bunkers,” is a symbol of the more enterprising end of the world. His range includes intricate underground complexes with indoor shooting ranges, hermetically sealed oxygen systems, and movie theaters, as well as $20,000 tunnel shelters that are well-liked in Israel.

In addition to appearing on reality TV, he reportedly designed a bunker for Mark Zuckerberg in Hawaii and constructed one for Andrew and Tristan Tate. In this space, he is a celebrity in the most peculiar way imaginable.

At the core of all this spending is genuine tension. The main contention of Rushkoff’s 2022 book Survival of the Richest, which he wrote in an attempt to dissect it, is that the idea is inherently flawed. “Successful prepping is a team sport,” he maintains. “In order to survive, your neighbors have to survive.” A billionaire under the protection of hired soldiers in a sealed silo is not resolving an issue. He might be making a new one.

When money lost all of its value, one of the executives Rushkoff encountered in the desert already questioned how he would continue to have control over his security force. The suggested remedies, which included robots, combination-locked food supplies, and disciplinary collars, exposed an unsettling aspect of how some wealthy people envision the social contract collapsing and what they believe will happen next.

However, there doesn’t appear to be a slowdown in demand. The Oppidum, a joint Soviet-Czechoslovak military project that was started in 1984, is being marketed as the world’s largest billionaire bunker. It is located in the Czech Republic and has planned features like a pool and an underground garden that is illuminated by artificial light.

Originally constructed to shield important officials from a nuclear winter, a decommissioned government bunker in South-East London was transformed into a $4 million opulent home with five bedrooms and a retractable glass roof. Silicon Valley money is quietly pouring into sheep paddocks and building permits in New Zealand, essentially betting that remote locations will emerge as the most valuable asset class of the next century.

It’s difficult to look at all of this without feeling that something has changed, not only in the real estate market but also in the minds of those who influence it. The wealthy prepper is not an oddball. Now that he’s in the mainstream, he’s creating his escape route in between board meetings, believing that survival is just another high-end product that needs to be purchased. What happens next will likely determine whether that conviction speaks more about his mental state or the state of the world.