{"id":38633,"date":"2020-08-01T15:16:00","date_gmt":"2020-08-01T12:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/why-so-many-americans-are-buying-up-personal-bunkers\/"},"modified":"2020-08-01T15:16:00","modified_gmt":"2020-08-01T12:16:00","slug":"why-so-many-americans-are-buying-up-personal-bunkers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/why-so-many-americans-are-buying-up-personal-bunkers\/","title":{"rendered":"#Why so many Americans are buying up personal bunkers"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#Why so many Americans are buying up personal bunkers<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

\n Tom Soulsby, 69, and his wife, Mary, were one of the first to buy a bunker at Vivos xPoint \u2014 the self-proclaimed \u201clargest survival community on Earth\u201d \u2014 near the South Dakota town of Edgemont. In 2017, he made a $25,000 down payment and signed a 99-year land lease (with fees of $1,000 per year) to occupy an elliptical-shaped, 2,200 square-foot underground concrete bunker once used as a military fortress during World War II to store weapons and ammunition.<\/p>\n

What he got for his money is security \u2014 and not much else. Sealed by a concrete and steel blast door entrance, each shelter comes retrofitted with electrical wiring, an internal power generation system, plumbing, and walls designed to withstand a 500,000-pound internal blast. Everything else \u2014 food, entertainment, a sense of community \u2014 is up to the occupant.<\/p>\n

Soulsby\u2019s goal, as he explains to cultural geographer Bradley Garrett \u2014 author of the new book \u201cBunker: Building for the End Times\u201d (Scribner), out Tuesday \u2014 was never to become a full-time bunker resident.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is just an insurance policy,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m going to fix it up and pass it down to my family. I hope no one ever has to use it.\u201d<\/p>\n

But if it becomes necessary \u2014 and with the COVID-19 pandemic and violent uprisings around the country, it seems increasingly likely to Soulsby that it will be \u2014 his bunker is well-stocked and move-in ready.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s already \u2018home sweet bunker\u2019 around here,\u201d he told Garrett.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/img>
The bunker owned by Milton Torres is part of a complex spanning 18 square miles, or nearly three-quarters the size of Manhattan.<\/span>Courtesy of Bradley L Garrett<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Milton Torres, 43, who also bought an xPoint bunker in 2017, quit his lucrative IT job at Chicago\u2019s Department of Veterans Affairs to live underground full-time.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just love my bunker,\u201d he told Garrett. \u201cI close the door and stay in there for a few days and then I can think again.\u201d<\/p>\n

The bunkers owned by Torres and Soulsby are both part of a complex spanning 18 square miles, or nearly three-quarters the size of Manhattan, connected by 100 miles of private road. Their neighbors include (or will include) the occupants of 574 additional private bunkers, capable of accommodating up to 10,000 people.<\/p>\n

When Soulsby signed on the dotted line, he was one of a handful of new owners. But in 2020, Vivos xPoint has become hotly sought-after real estate. The price has jumped to $35,000, says Robert Vicino, the California developer and CEO of the Vivos Group, which launched in 2008, and bunker sales are \u201cup over 600 percent.\u201d<\/p>\n

Five hundred bunkers are still available, but Vicino tells The Post they\u2019re \u201ccurrently selling about one bunker a day.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a good time to be in the bunker business \u2014 or as Garrett has dubbed them, \u201cDread Merchants.\u201d There are around 3.7 million Americans prepping today on some scale, feeding a multibillion-dollar-a-year industry that has become more mainstream because of the pandemic. \u201cI expect a quarter of the country to be prepping on some level by the end of the year,\u201d Garrett tells The Post.<\/p>\n

During the late 1950s and early 1960s, Cold War tensions and nuclear war anxiety caused more than 200,000 Americans to invest in fallout shelters. But it was a passing fad, and the new wave of bunker owners aren\u2019t just driven by fears of nuclear annihilation.<\/p>\n

\"Survival<\/img>
Survival Condo bunkers feature luxury items like pools and large screen TVs.<\/span>Courtesy of Bradley L. Garrett<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A YouGov survey from last February found that nearly one in five (19 percent) Americans believe a global pandemic or climate change would bring about an apocalypse, compared to 17 percent who think humanity will be eradicated by nuclear war.<\/p>\n

Bunker-leasing and selling companies have been popping up across the country in recent years \u2014 there\u2019s Hardened Structures in Virginia Beach, Va., Northeast Bunkers in Pittsfield, Maine, and Atlas Survival Shelters in Sulphur Springs, Texas, to name a few \u2014 and their customer base isn\u2019t motivated by a single imminent catastrophe.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a more general<\/a> sense of disquiet in response to a greater variety of threats,\u201d says Garrett.<\/p>\n

Larry Hall, 63, who converted an underground Cold War nuclear missile silo in central Kansas into a 15-story inverted skyscraper, says he\u2019s received four times the usual level of inquiries from potential buyers this year, and he believes it\u2019s largely due to COVID-19.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople now realize just how fragile their normal existence really is,\u201d he tells The Post. \u201cTo this point, we now have a new level of credibility and far less people who considered us as \u2018paranoid.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n

Garrett suspects that it\u2019s the media, and social media<\/a> in particular, that has fueled bunker interest.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the past, if there was a disaster somewhere, we might learn about it long after the event had passed, or never at all,\u201d he says. \u201cNow we\u2019re subjected to an endless drip-feed of dread detailing every emergency, major and minor, taking place across the world. This gives us a collective sense that everything is falling apart.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Tom<\/img>
Tom Soulsby and his wife were one of the first to buy a bunker at Vivos xPoint near the South Dakota town of Edgemont.<\/span>Courtesy of Bradley L. Garrett<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Which is a good thing for dread merchants. As Dante Vicino, 27, the Executive Director of the Vivos Group, told The Post, bunker-curious customers are \u201cnow ready to get off the proverbial fence and secure a space while they still can.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Larry Hall, the biggest challenge in building his Survival Condo wasn\u2019t making sure the epoxy-hardened concrete walls were thick enough (they\u2019re nine feet deep) or that the water reserve tanks had a minimum of 75,000 gallons (they do), but whether living underground was psychologically and socially tolerable.<\/p>\n

Hall, an ex\u2013government contractor and property developer, purchased a Kansas silo in 2008 for just $300,000, and in less than a decade transformed it into a luxury bolthole, where a community of 75 could survive up to five years. Assuming, of course, he could find a way to \u201cmake this place as normal as possible,\u201d Hall explained to Garrett.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo one wants to be reminded all the time that they are basically living in a submarine.\u201d<\/p>\n

He\u2019s worked with psychologists to create that illusion of \u201cnormalcy,\u201d he says. Where life below ground wouldn\u2019t feel all that dissimilar from their \u201cpre-event\u201d life.<\/p>\n

People now realize just how fragile their normal existence really is.<\/p>\n

\u00a0–\u00a0South Dakota bunker developer Larry Hall <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So he created a food distribution area that looked and operated similar to a grocery store above ground. \u201cGetting food out of a box is not the same as going to a store and filling a shopping cart,\u201d Hall tells The Post. \u201cThese senses keep your subconscious mind \u2018happ<\/a>y.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n

All Survival Condo apartments come equipped with LED window screens, on which residents can display anything that puts their minds at ease. One apartment, designed to feel like a log cabin, has a six-screen window display that looks down on \u201ca snow-capped mountain range,\u201d Garrett writes.<\/p>\n

Another resident, who currently resides in New York City, paid for a two-story underground \u201cpenthouse\u201d with a view that reminds her of home.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe had videos filmed of Central Park from her Manhattan loft during all four seasons, day and night, together with the cacophonous sounds of urban life.\u201d Garrett writes.<\/p>\n

Using a $75,000 projector, her Survival Condo has a balcony view that resembles the world she\u2019ll eventually leave behind. It\u2019s meant to be comforting, as long as she doesn\u2019t remember that she\u2019s \u201cstaring at video images of a city and neighbors long-since decimated in an apocalyptic event,\u201d says Garrett.<\/p>\n

All of the accommodations \u2014 from the two-level thousand-square-foot penthouse, which sells for $4.5 million, to the full-floor ($3 million) and half-floor apartments ($1.5 million) \u2014 have luxury furnishings like stone electric fireplaces and marble countertop kitchens. They also have access to a shared gym, gender-separated saunas, a library, a classroom for children, and a cinema with terraced leather recliners.<\/p>\n

\"Supplies<\/img>
Supplies at Vivos Indiana, a bunker somewhere near Terre Haute.<\/span>Courtesy of Bradley L Garrett<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

So far, 57 people have signed on to join the Survival Condo community, occupying (or reserving) twelve apartments. Their identities are strictly confidential, but Hall does claim they have at least two doctors \u2014 \u201cprecisely the kind of clients he was looking for,\u201d writes Garrett.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a stark contrast to the customer demographics at Vivos. Although xPoint promotes itself as a \u201cluxury\u201d bunker facility, Vicino insists that the majority of his clients are middle-class.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a myth that Vivos is only for billionaires,\u201d he says. His other bunker complex, Vivos Indiana, another one-time Cold War-era structure \u2014 its exact location is a secret, but it\u2019s rumored to be near Terre Haute \u2014 costs just $35,000 per adult and $25,000 per child for apocalypse security for up to a year, and all 80 slots have already sold out.<\/p>\n

Bunker preppers don\u2019t consider themselves fatalists; they\u2019re realists. But they also have hope. \u201cIf you don\u2019t believe there will be a future, there\u2019s no reason to prep,\u201d writes Garrett. \u201cSo prepping is a hopeful act, an act of defiance against disaster.\u201d<\/p>\n

Or, as Vicino explains: \u201cNo one wants to go into the bunker, they want to come out<\/em> of the bunker.\u201d<\/p>\n

The one common denominator among all preppers is a distrust of the government. They have no faith in politicians to save them, whether it\u2019s from a pandemic, climate change, or something else just as ominous.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know there\u2019s a comet coming our way and the government is ready but they\u2019re not going to protect us,\u201d Vicino told Garrett. \u201cYou look at the dinosaurs, they got hit by a comet and what life survived that event? The life that went underground.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/img><\/p>\n

Mark Bowman, an Indiana tradesman who was one of the first, along with Soulsby, to lease an xPoint bunker back in 2017, told Garrett he believes FEMA stands for \u201cFoolishly Expecting Meaningful Aid.\u201d There are no Democrats or Republicans among the xPoint Bunker owners, just a community united by the idea that when real trouble happens, the \u201csclerotic government infrastructure\u201d will leave them for dead.<\/p>\n

But their contempt for politicians doesn\u2019t extend to their fellow citizens. In fact, Soulsby believes that a big disaster \u201cwould actually bring out the best in people,\u201d writes Garrett, an event that \u201cmight be a way of enabling us to recover a lost social solidarity.\u201d<\/p>\n

This depiction goes against the usual media portrayal of preppers hiding behind steel walls while their fellow humans perish beyond their secure boundaries.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter the reset,\u201d says Torres, speaking of the coming apocalypse, \u201cwe won\u2019t even need laws, just the respect we already have for each other. I can\u2019t wait for that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe way I see it,\u201d Soulsby told the author, \u201cbeing prepared puts me in a better position to help others. It\u2019s like when you fly, and they tell you to put the oxygen mask on yourself first.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you\u2019re dead, you\u2019re not helping anyone.\u201d\n <\/p><\/div>\n

\n

If you want to read more News<\/a> articles, you can visit our General category.<\/a><\/span><\/strong>\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“#Why so many Americans are buying up personal bunkers” Tom Soulsby, 69, and his wife, Mary, were one of the first to buy a bunker at Vivos xPoint \u2014 the self-proclaimed \u201clargest survival community on Earth\u201d \u2014 near the South Dakota town of Edgemont. In 2017, he made a $25,000 down payment and signed a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":38634,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[47419],"class_list":["post-38633","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-why-so-many-americans-are-buying-up-personal-bunkers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38633","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38633"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38633\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38634"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}