Luxurious condos prepared for doomsday

Luxurious condos prepared for doomsday
Built below Kansas prairie, the ‘Doomsday shelter’ will help millionaires to sit out the Apocalypse in style. In fact, four buyers have already invested in condos below the ground. Meanwhile, fears range from pandemics, terrorism and solar flares. Noteworthy, there’s even an indoor farm able to provide fish and vegetables for 70 people for as long as necessary. In addition, these luxurious condos, which come with all the mod-cons, as well as a pool, a movie theater and a library, guarantee the safety. According to sources, rich people will survive Doomsday if and when that fateful day comes.

So far, four buyers have thrown down a total of about $7million for havens to flee to when disaster happens or the end is nigh. And developer Larry Hall has options to retro-fit three more Cold War-era silos when this one fills up.

These ‘doomsday preppers’, as they are called, want a safe place and he will be there with them because Hall, 55, bought one of the condos for himself. He says his fear is that sun flares could wipe out the power grid and cause chaos.

Larry Hall and his wife and son live in Denver and will use their condo mostly as a vacation home, he says, but if the grid goes, they will be ready.

Built to withstand an atomic blast, even the most paranoid can find comfort inside concrete walls that are nine feet thick and stretch 174 feet (53 meters) underground. For now, metal stairs stretch down to connect each floor but an elevator will later replace them. The units are within a steel and concrete core inside the original thick concrete, which makes them better able to withstand earthquakes.

Hall is also installing an indoor farm to grow enough fish and vegetables to feed 70 people for as long as they need to stay inside and also stockpiling enough dry goods to feed them for five years. The top floor and an outside building above it will be for elaborate security.
Other floors will be for a pool, a movie theater and a library, and when in lockdown mode there will be floors for a medical center and a school. The condo elevator will only operate if a person’s fingerprint matches its system, Hall said. Cameras will monitor a barbed-wire topped fence and give plenty of warning of possible intruders. Responses can range from a warning to lethal force. If they try to climb the fence we can stun them,’ he said. ‘If they want to break into the system, we can put an end to that.’

Fear sells even better than sex,’ said John Hoopes, a professor in the anthropology department at the University of Kansas who has studied the spread of doomsday culture.
Hall says threats from nature and man are increasing and he wants to create a safe communal society where people survive chaos in comfort, with each person doing an assigned job and interacting with others. He is working to finish an 1,800 square-foot (167 square-meter) unit for a wealthy businesswoman with two teen children.

So far he has spent $4 million on the entire silo, including $300,000 he paid for it in 2008, when it was flooded with water and locked by giant steel doors. He expects to have all the seven floors of condos sold by August.

Interested buyers have included an NFL player, a racing car driver, a movie producer and famous politicians, he said, but he now requires all the money up front.

For these luxury flats, deep below the Kansas prairie in the shaft of an abandoned missile silo, are meant to withstand everything from economic collapse and solar flares to terrorist attacks and pandemics.

Luxurious condos prepared for doomsday

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