Just in case there’s an apocalypse, the super-rich are buying bunkers. Big bunkers. Bunkers with swimming pools, indoor gardens, cinemas, and, in the case of Peter Thiel’s proposed New Zealand hideout, a meditation room — a vital amenity in the advent of a nuclear war.
Ever since the invasion of Ukraine, with Putin threatening to use nuclear weapons to defend Russia, paranoia has been booming. One of the biggest names in the bunker building business, Rising S — run from an anonymous-looking, corrugated iron factory in Murchison, Texas, just across the road from a campsite called ‘Stay A While’ — flogs as many as five units a day, at between $70,000 and $240,000 a pop. The company’s slogan is ‘We Don’t Sell Fear, We Sell Preparedness’ (the first image that greets you when you Google them is of a city being gutted by seven nuclear bombs). Their premium, $8.3 million ‘Aristocrat’ model includes a sauna, gym, bowling alley, and gun range, although they do warn that ‘some features that require a great deal of power may not run effectively using the solar powered systems’.
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