julieturkewitzVerified account

. . . In the course of that reporting, I began hearing about another corner of the Western land market: bunker real estate.

This led me to Larry Hall, owner of Survival Condo, a former military nuclear missile vault built 15 stories into the earth’s crust that he has converted into a luxury condominium.

Spacious living rooms, swimming pool, saunas, movie theater, weapons cache — it's got the works.

Larry is not alone; in recent years, personalized disaster prep has grown into a multimillion-dollar business.

In Las Vegas, an underground bunker built by the Avon Cosmetics executive Girard Henderson, featuring a midcentury chef’s kitchen and a wood-burning fireplace, is on sale for $18 million.

In Kansas, one couple has been selling old missile silos through a company called 20th Century Castles.

In Colorado, a former weapons compound featuring half a mile of underground tunnels is listed on the real estate site LoopNet for $4.2 million.

In Indiana, Robert Vicino, a California property developer, has converted a former government site into an underground mansion called Vivos that he says is “like a very comfortable four-star hotel.”

He has also purchased 575 former weapons cellars in South Dakota that he is turning into a subdivision he calls the “largest survival community on earth.”

And Larry Hall, who is now well-known among doomsday entrepreneurs, is expanding to a second survival condo. Among the potential buyers, he said, are representatives of the Saudi Arabian military, who have asked him to draw up plans for an on-site heliport and underground mosque.