Billionaire bunkers: NZ amongst places where elite may ride out Coronavirus

The very rich are different from you and me.

When times get tough, they don't ravage supermarket shelves for toilet paper and Clorox wipes. Instead, they jet to luxury bunkers outfitted like underground mansions where they can wait out a pandemic or other cataclysm with all the comforts they're accustomed to.

Silicon Valley executives and assorted billionaires who subscribe to Burning Man's "radical self reliance" ethos have already been preparing for worst-case global scenarios. Now, it turns out that they may have been prescient.

"There's a lot of 'I told you so's' going on right about now among our customers," said Gary Lynch, general manager of Rising S Company, which manufactures bunkers at its Texas factory and then installs them underground on clients' properties.

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These aren't Cold War-style bomb shelters stocked with canned beans.

"Before we came along, bunkers were just cold, clammy holes in the ground; dank, dark, moist uncomfortable places nobody wanted to be unless there was a threat of nuclear war," Lynch said. "We made them more like homes."

That is, if your home is a 13,000-square-foot residence with a shooting range, bowling alley, movie theatre, gym and greenhouse, like a US$15 million (NZ$25.2) bunker he built for a client in Napa.

About 1000 requests for information have flooded Rising S in recent weeks. Lynch plans to add a second shift to his factory to meet demand. While the billionaire bunkers are the most lucrative, the company also offers more modest underground dwellings, at about US$150,000 (NZ$250,000) for 600 square feet.

Rising S had a run on requests for New Zealand bunkers a few years ago. It's installed a few dozen there, mainly for clients from Silicon Valley, he said.

Billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal and an early Facebook investor, has a 477-acre former sheep station in New Zealand. He's credited for turning the island nation into the tech world's destination for doomsday preppers. An entire Vice documentary, Hunt for the Bunker People, centered on the New Zealand bolthole phenomenon.

"Saying you're 'buying a house in New Zealand' is kind of a wink, wink, say no more," allusion to an apocalypse hide-away there, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman told The New Yorker in 2017.

More than half of his fellow Silicon Valley billionaires have built refuges in case of cataclysmic events, Hoffman told the magazine.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, told The New Yorker in 2016 that in the event of a pandemic, he would fly with Thiel to New Zealand. But that's not his only back-up plan.

"I have guns, gold, potassium iodide, antibiotics, water, gas masks ... and a big patch of land in Big Sur I can fly to," he told the magazine.

But in fact, his current reality is similar to everyone else's, with the addition that, according to his website, he's funding projects helping with COVID-19.

"I'm planning to stay in San Francisco, stocked up on food and sheltering in place, and trying to help as much as I can," he wrote in an email. "I do have a lot of emergency supplies but feel fine here."

Some developers have turned former military installations into doomsday destinations. One big difference: Sometimes that means the residents will be cohabiting with other preppers, not just their immediate family.

Survival Condo has 14 luxury doomsday residences inside a former Atlas missile silo in Kansas built to withstand a nuclear strike. There's  a medical centre, 75-foot-long swimming pool with waterfall, dog park, climbing wall, movie theatre, well-stocked armory, hydroponic gardens for produce and an aquaculture system to breed fish for food. More than three years' worth of food is stockpiled. Outside, armed guards patrol 24/7.

"We took a literal weapon of mass destruction and turned it into a state of the art structure that saves lives," said developer/owner Larry Hall. "This structure will outlast the great castles of Europe."

As it name implies, the complex legally consists of condominiums with a homeowners' association, albeit one with unusual requirements. Residents commit to rotating through four-hour days providing essential services such as childcare, tending the garden, doing security, maintenance, pool duty, inventory control. "A psychologist told us this was mandatory," Hall said. "The worst thing is to have people who don't feel productive."

Prices are a bargain by Bay Area standards, ranging from US$500,000 (NZ$840,000) for a hotel-sized suite to US$2.4 million (NZ$4.03m) for a full-floor unit. The phone is ringing off the hook there as well, Hall said. Two units are in contract now, including one that a client bought sight unseen last week based on a video tour.

"So many people procrastinate," Hall said. "The time to buy a bunker is when you don't need it, not when you need it. The silver lining in this is that it's a wake-up call to the world of just how fragile our existence is."

While the current owners haven't yet sheltered inside, he's heard from many who are getting ready.

Hall is preparing to convert a second silo to a bunker and has several clients bidding to turn it into a single residence rather than a multi-unit complex. One, from Saudi Arabia, "wants a heliport, James Bond-style, with an underground tunnel to connect to the main facility and an underground mosque", he said, estimating that would pencil out at about US$60 million (NZ $100.7m).

Sustainability is key, he said, with power coming from wind turbines and geothermal.

He even planned for the toilet paper catastrophe.

"All our toilets have bidet seats," he said.

As with all bunker makers, one feature that's de rigueur is top-notch air filtration. All the bunker-makers' websites tout abilities such as screening out anthrax and of course, coronavirus.

For the bargain-basement-bunker shopper, Terra Vivos has 575 bunkers at a former military ordinance depot in Igloo, San Diego, for US$35,000 (NZ$58,775) each. About 50 of the 2200-square-foot residences have sold. Each has a separate entrance through its own blast door.

"They're the townhouses at the end of the world," said CEO and founder Robert Vicino. "They're moving along very quickly, selling every day or every other day."

Of course, for that price, don't expect Four Seasons amenities. It's BYO diesel fuel for the included generator. He recommends 1000 gallons (3785 litres) for a year. He's selling bare boxes; owners kit them out "everything from glamping to five-star finishes", he said. Water comes from an aquifer the army drilled 4200 feet down.

Residents hail from all walks of life. "We have very high-net-worth individuals buying those bunkers and people who are blue collar," Vicino said. "We provide financing."

Terra Vivos has other options too. In Indiana, it has a 10,000-square-foot underground complex with 21 private hotel-like suites that can house differing numbers of people.

"It's like an underground cruise ship," he said, rattling off amenities such as theatre, lounge areas, video games, high-quality shared kitchens. Hydroponic gardens ensure that "everybody can have a fresh leafy green salad every day", he said.

It's already sold out, with 80 potential residents who paid US$35,000 (NZ$58,760) each. Vicino was selective in balancing their skills, making sure to have plumbers as well as doctors, for example.

The residents are starting to flock to the area, staying nearby in motels and RVs. "We won't activate it until it is time," Vicino said.

Isn't a global pandemic reason enough?

"We're waiting until the real stuff hits the fan," he said. "When the banks are closed and you can't buy any food. When gangs are roving looking for whatever they can get. Then you need to get in a fortress."

San Francisco Chronicle