Mark Megahan
The latest fashion style for the rich and famous is your own custom doomsday bunker. The global elite don’t really care if Vlad Putin or Xi Jinping blows the whole planet away. As long as they don’t blast the crust off, the world’s billionaires are all set to dig in with bespoke luxury until the fallout falls out.
Armageddon in style and comfort
Surviving doomsday in style isn’t the average conference subject but when tech author Douglas Rushkoff was invited to meet with five of the world’s wealthiest men at a remote resort, to discuss the future of the planet, he jumped at the chance.
Certain topics kept coming up again and again, “the best ways to survive climate change or societal collapse.” With great enthusiasm, the big phrase on everyone’s lips was “The Event.” All of them compared “their plans to build underground bunkers.”
“The CEO of a brokerage house explained that he had nearly completed building his own underground bunker system.” He was all set to keep his family in comfort and style but still didn’t have all the final details worked out.
His big question was: “How do I maintain authority over my security force after ‘The Event?’” That’s a good point when they are the ones with the guns and he’s the one with the keys to the food and liquor.
The billionaires at the little gathering weren’t limiting themselves to only one possible catastrophe. To them “the event” might be “environmental collapse, social unrest, nuclear explosion, solar storm, unstoppable virus or malicious computer hack that takes everything down.”
If they need to bug out they will. They have the money to do it in style. Vivos and Rising S appear to be the preferred doomsday bunker architects for the rich and famous.
Common areas and private space
No self-respecting billionaire is going underground without taking a bunch of people with them for company, companionship and to restart the human race with later. To prevent cabin fever induced homicides as time drags on takes subtle style in the design.
The executives also need someone to do the dishes and make the beds. That means that architects need to come up with a way to provide both common areas for people to hang out and interact, as well as private areas for sanity maintenance time.
Vivos has a complex known as their “most luxurious site” called Europa One. It’s located in Germany and “provides individual families with over 2,500 square feet of living.”
The “world’s largest private shelter” has unique style of its own along with “numerous amenities.” Operating as a self-contained village, the shelter has a “bar, chapel, pools, and more.” They designed it to “cater to the mental health of residents and attempts to simulate natural light in the underground shelter.”
After hearing what the men with all the money to make their wildest dreams come true hashed out for their plans to survive doomsday in style, Rushkoff was left with a surprising observation.
“The probability of a fortified bunker actually protecting its occupants from the reality of, well, reality, is very slim. For one, the closed ecosystems of underground facilities are preposterously brittle,” he wrote for The Guardian. “Just the known unknowns are enough to dash any reasonable hope of survival.“
