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A private nuclear fallout shelter has long been a perk of the ultrawealthy. Mark Zuckerberg, Kim Kardashian, and Bill Gates have reportedly all invested in luxurious underground bunkers to survive the worst-case scenario of a nuclear war.
But nuclear bunkers aren’t just for the elites.
Increasingly, average homeowners are investing in a bunker, typically a structure made of steel, buried underground, and equipped with an NBC (nuclear, biochemical) air filtration system.
“We’ve definitely seen a spike in customers. After the invasion of Ukraine, my phone rang about every 30 seconds,” says Ron Hubbard, CEO of Atlas Survival Shelters in Sulphur Springs, TX, which designs and builds private bunkers.
The market for fallout shelters has increased from an estimated $137 million in 2023 to $175 million in 2030, according to a report from consulting firm Blue Weave.
“My customers are concerned about nuclear war, biological attacks, or any kind of chemical attacks,” says Hubbard. Both the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Gaza spurred sales.
His shelters start at $20,000 and can run into the millions.
Are nuclear bunkers necessary?
Many experts say no. Provided a person doesn’t die in the initial blast, they point out there is a decent chance of survival. However, that survival might not be pretty.
“In times of extreme stress, like the ones after a nuclear explosion, people become desperate,” says California real estate investor Jameson Tyler Drew, who has sold homes with “old Cold War” bunkers. “Food and water become difficult for most unprepared people to find.”
One need only read the accounts of the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, after the U.S. dropped nuclear bombs on the cities in 1945, to know that surviving a nuclear blast is just the tip of the iceberg.
Some experts warn that bunkers give the populace a false sense of safety—and distract them from demanding an end to the buildup of nuclear weapons.
“Bunkers are, in fact, not a tool to survive a nuclear war, but a tool to allow a population to psychologically endure the possibility of a nuclear war,” Alicia Sanders-Zakre at the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons told the Associated Press.
Massachusetts Congressman James McGovern, who has been fighting for nonproliferation for 50 years, agrees.
“If we ever get to a point where there’s all-out nuclear war, underground bunkers aren’t going to protect people,” he says. “Instead, we ought to be investing our resources and our energy trying to talk about a nuclear weapons freeze, initially.”
The end of civil defense
Bunkers—both public and private—hit their peak in the 1960s, at the height of the Cold War.
“While fallout shelters appear to be experiencing a renaissance, their heyday was unquestionably in the post-World War II years, a literal expression of the Atomic Age,” says Larry Samuel, author of “Home Ownership in America.”
“In fact, some real estate entrepreneurs of the 1950s and 1960s believed there could be a mass market for underground homes if they were promoted properly. ‘Underground home’ was the preferred term over the decidedly negative ‘fallout shelter.’”
Many other countries—even those that have been in peacetime for decades—have civil defense mandates, with many public buildings required to have underground safety areas in case of attack.
Switzerland, Norway, and Finland, for example, have vast networks of underground bunkers that can accommodate tens of thousands of people.
“There’s no civil defense plan in the U.S.,” laments Hubbard. “If a nuclear bomb hit New York City, it would take everyone out.”
In the U.S., fears of a nuclear bomb have generally been displaced by other fears, such as extreme weather events and mass shooters.
But those who are concerned about nuclear annihilation aren’t waiting for the government to take action—they are buying their own bunkers and installing them in their backyards.
While FEMA stipulates that each occupant of a bunker must have at least 10 square feet and 6.5 feet of headroom, those with the means also want to bring their above-ground luxuries below ground. They should also consult with their municipality to determine what permits might be needed.
The most high-end bunkers—designed so people can comfortably live in them for months if not years—contain all the rooms a regular house would. Sometimes much more.
Take the Survival Condo condominiums somewhere outside of Kansas City. (Most people don’t want to advertise the exact locations of their bunkers, lest they be overrun with unwanted guests.)
The condos run from $1.5 million to $4 million. Common areas include an indoor swimming pool, spa, game room, cinema, putting green, gym, hydroponic food production, and a redundant water supply with 75,000-gallon backup tanks.
What if you don’t have millions for a nuclear-proof condo?
How to survive a nuclear attack
Most experts agree you can survive a nuclear blast by finding shelter as soon as possible.
“It will take about 15 minutes for the radioactive fallout to arrive for those a mile or more away from ground zero,” Michael Dillon, a scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, told the Associated Press. “It’s going to literally be sand falling on your head, and you’re going to want to get out of that situation. You want to go to your most robust building.”
“If your home wasn’t near the epicenter of the blast, the most you’ll have to deal with is the radioactive fallout,” adds Drew. “So long as you don’t expose yourself to this radioactive dust, you should survive.”
He recommends buying an earthquake survival kit, stocking enough food and water for at least two weeks, duct-taping your doors and windows, and keeping dried apple juice powder on hand to “flush out harmful cesium isotopes.”
If you must go outside, he recommends tossing your newly radioactive clothes and scrubbing them down with soap and water before reentering your house.
Even Hubbard, who says he sells at least a bunker a day, admits that one doesn’t necessarily need a bunker to survive a nuclear bomb.
“You want to go to the lowest-lying level place you can get and you want as much earth as you can get between you and the outside,” he advises. “Nuclear fallout decays at the rate of 90% per day; after four days, the radiation is at one-thousandth of its strength. You’re going to get that on a hot day with the sun on you. Nuclear war is very survivable if you’re prepared and know what to do.”
He points out that hundreds of nuclear warheads have been dropped an hour outside of Las Vegas and “no one died.”
These days, a few generations from the Cold War, investing in an expensive bunker might seem paranoid.
But Hubbard says that even if his customers don’t think a nuclear war will start in their lifetimes, they want to have a bunker for the future.
“A bunker will last centuries,” he says. “This is an investment for their children and grandchildren.”
Though he admits sales have lately slowed a bit—thanks to President-elect Donald Trump.
English (US)