The Vivos Indiana underground survival shelter is a nuclear-hardened, luxury shelter — conveniently “located within a one-day drive from anywhere in the Midwest and the Eastern seaboard of America”:
Built during the Cold War to withstand a 20 megaton blast, within just a few miles, this impervious underground complex accommodates up to 80 people, for a minimum of one year of fully autonomous survival, without needing to return to the surface.
Like a very comfortable 4-Star hotel, this massive shelter is tastefully and comfortably furnished and decorated, completely outfitted, fully stocked with food, toiletries, linens, medical supplies, a one year supply of fuel, a deep water well, NBC filtration systems, geothermal heating and cooling, bedroom suites, full size showers and bathrooms, a theater area, dining area, lounge area, exercise equipment, kennels, a garden area for fresh vegetables, laundry area, abundant storage areas, ATV’s, bicycles, tools, a workshop, security devices; and, just about everything else that may be needed to ride out virtually any catastrophic event. You only need to bring your personal clothing and medications. We’ve thought of everything else!
Far from any known nuclear targets, this shelter is also strategically located a safe distance away from the New Madrid fault line, the Mississippi River, and all oceans that might cause submersion as a result of a tsunami-type event. The site is also surrounded by excellent farming, fishing, hunting and water resources.
Vice magazine takes a look and, naturally, hates what it sees:
In the 90s, [Robert Vicino] took up selling shares in villas in swanky spots like Aspen and the South of France. It was the idea of fractional ownership that got him thinking about a long-coveted dream of his to build survival bunkers where people of means could escape Armageddon in comfort. In 2007, just before the financial crash, he decided to give it a go.
His timing was impeccable. Since 2013, the country has minted 1.6 million new millionaires , and there are an estimated 3 million-plus preppers in the US. It stands to reason those groups overlap, especially since in these divided political times, many of the rich are concerned with their money’s security: what threatens it, how to hang on to it, and above all, what happens when the have-nots get tired of not having it. (Witness the infamous 2014 Wall Street Journal letter to the editor that compared America to Nazi Germany and the wealthy to the Jews.) Vicino warns that the rich need to be ready for a scenario that will “turn Suzy Homemaker into a gun-wielding predator.” As he asked me, without any apparent irony, “Do you really want to fight off all the zombies, the predators, the gangs, the militias, whatever else is roaming the streets to get what you got?”
It’s a good time to be in a fear-based industry. Public comments from some of the planet’s richest people reveal a strain of paranoia about insurrection. At the last annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, observers noticed elites growing more alarmed about the possibility of social unrest. Last year, entrepreneur and venture capitalist Nick Hanauer published an open letter to his “Fellow Zillionaires” in Politico Magazine that summed up the growing worry among the wealthy: “What do I see in our future now? I see pitchforks.”
This matches what Vicino hears. “They’re going to Patagonia, they’re going to remote locations of the world,” he says. “Their reasoning is more to be insulated from a revolution, rebellion, anarchy, or whatever, following an economic collapse.”
The affluent have always spent money on things that they feel will help them hold onto what they have. But the rise of businesses like Vicino’s points to a convergence of social and political trends that has become a toxic brew of inequality, paranoia, and extreme individualism.
This raises the question of what you should do to prepare for the worst, since I doubt a luxury timeshare in Indiana is the answer for most of us.
The real question is whether the shelter is defendable against a ground assualt. After a nuclear war, many people will want the goodies inside.
Well, the worst is along the lines of a rogue neutron star looping in behind the sun and obliterating the solar system.
Earthly matters requires some organizing with a group of like-minded people to defend some high ground in preparation for taking the low ground.
Take a page from the Swiss and distribute them discreetly across the countryside.
Isegoria’s been Swiss bunkering before.
The plan for survival obviously depends on the assumptions about the survival scenario. You may just need a simply bug-out bag or week-long supply of essentials in the case of extreme weather.
You might need to wait out some bad times for a year or so.
Or you may need a real sustainable fortress and plan for collective defense. And will your adversaries and neo-marauders have shooting drones with better range than your marksmen?