Robert Vicino, a US real estate salesman and owner of the company Vivos, which makes bunkers, has claimed that sales of underground shelters are up 400 percent this year amid the disease outbreak. In an interview with The New York Post, Vicino said: "All my customers know something bad could happen. The dominoes are falling. We could be a month away from a meltdown. What’s everyone going to do when they run out of food and money? It could get ugly. By that time, it’s too late to call me".
Vivos offers all kinds of bunkers where you can live comfortably while the world is falls apart due to a nuclear blast, asteroid collision, biochemical attack, or a giant tsunami. Besides the standard kitchen, bathroom, and bedroom, there are also swimming pools, tennis courts, lounge zones, gyms, and theatres. Needless to say, they all have food, water, fuel, and hygiene supplies for a year.
The bunkers vary in size, with the biggest one able to accommodate up to 80 people.
"Each bunker is buried and protected under thick berms of soil, reportedly designed and built by the Army to withstand a 500,000-pound internal blast, while being strategically separated from the next bunker by an average of 400 feet in all directions. This shape mitigates a surface blast wave, as well as radioactive fallout due to the overburden of soil and concrete", reads a statement on the company’s website.
The bunkers, located in South Dakota in the US, were built during the Cold War and, according to the website, can withstand a 20-megaton blast, which is equivalent to 1,000 Fat Man atomic bombs – the kind that was dropped on Nagasaki.
The most modest shelter costs $17,500, while the price for a high-end doomsday bunker stands at $35,000.
If you want to wait out the apocalypse in Europe, be prepared to shell out two million euros. Bunkers there are built into the bedrock of a mountain in Germany.