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Vivos Founder Builds an Underground City Where You Can Ride Out the Apocalypse

Posted by samzenpus on from the that's-great,-it-starts-with-an-earthquake dept.

pigrabbitbear writes "'I was inspired with a very powerful message around 1980 that I needed to build a shelter for 1,000 people deep underground to survive something that was coming that was going to be an extinction event,' he explained in an extensive phone interview. 'That's it, that's all I had. But it was powerful. So powerful that I had a successful business with 100 employees and I took time off to go up into the mountains and search on weekends looking for an underground mine or cave that could be cartoned and converted.' Today, Vicino is the owner and founder of Vivos, a company that sells space in luxury survival complexes around the country. It's what he likes to call 'life assurance'--mini underground cities, in effect, for people ride out the end of civilization in a community setting with good food, television, even a potential dating pool. He says demand has increased 1,000 percent this year compared to last—itself a 1,000 percent increase over the year before."

9 of 150 comments (clear)

  1. so... up to 100 customers then? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    #MATH

  2. To ride out the end of civilization by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What a marvelous idea. We'll just hide in this handy cave and watch TV until the zombies have all eaten each other. After that we can come out and someone will be ready with McDonalds and Starbucks waiting for us.

    1. Re:To ride out the end of civilization by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I have to wonder if the perversely optimistic nature of most 'survival' plans(optimistic compared to, say, a collapse of complex social systems where service industries don't just spring up again to take your hoarded gold in exchange for fresh food, not optimistic compared to non-collapse scenarios) has to do with psychological self-selection....

      The greater one's confidence in one's own individual agency, capability, ability to achieve goals, etc. as opposed to a general lack of confidence or overt recognition of dependence in some areas of life, the more likely somebody might be to treat surviving an apocalypse of some flavor as a plausible goal. However, the same sorts of traits frequently predispose people to adopt vaguely antisocial and tech-heavy solutions for a problem that is (short of magic nanites or something) unlikely to be solvable alone.

      In terms of surviving hostile conditions and the closest thing to isolation from modern society that the planet currently has to offer, empirical observation pretty much forces you to bet on the various relatively low-tech, clannish, kin groups that have lots of experience with scrounging in their own squalor. It isn't a pretty strategy; but it has worked for essentially the entire period between the evolution of Homo Sapiens and the rise of agricultural civilization(and for a time thereafter, albeit only in places marginal enough that agricultural civilizations couldn't be bothered to send in the army for a bit of the old 'civilizing').

      By contrast, your techie-nerd survival-through-gadgets-and-stockpiles types can be expected to last only slightly longer than their MRE supply...

    2. Re:To ride out the end of civilization by PvtVoid · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Mod parent up, please. The number one thing you need to survive the coming apocalypse (which isn't actually coming) is a community that works together. Stock rice and beans, but instead of stockpiling ammo, get to know your neighbor. You won't have to shoot them, then.

    3. Re:To ride out the end of civilization by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Mod parent up, please.

      The number one thing you need to survive the coming apocalypse (which isn't actually coming) is a community that works together. Stock rice and beans, but instead of stockpiling ammo, get to know your neighbor. You won't have to shoot them, then.

      If human history is anything to go by, you'll unfortunately have to master both skills. Not only do you have to be good enough neighbors that your attempt at agriculture doesn't end in mass starvation and not too many disagreements over the neighborhood's offspring and their foolish dating choices end in generations-long blood feuds; but you also have to be ready for a more or less constant series of meat-grinder skirmishes with the guys who live a valley over from you, all for reasons that are largely inchoate but will seem like a big deal at the time...

  3. They don't do much by Hentes · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The business is basically buying up old government shelters for cheap, put some furniture in and then sell it for 100 times more. However much would this guy like to portray himself as a modern-day Noah, he is just a smart businessman preying on people's fears.

  4. Re:not totally irrational by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 3, Insightful

    There are other alternatives, also unpalatable:

    Depending on where you fall on the spectrum of confidence in second-through-Nth-strike capabilities, it doesn't necessarily have to be the case that a nuclear war would involve everybody shouting FIRE ZE MISSILES!!! and launching the world's supply of strategic nukes. If confidence in second strike is very low, or is based entirely on a 'we can get our rockets off the ground in the time between when theirs pop up on the big board and when they hit', then it will be over hard and fast. If, though, you assume a much more robust and survivable capability(missile subs, widely distributed 'Davy Crocket' style low-yield tactical devices in the hands of military units, significant optimism about how hard your bunkers really are) you might see a relatively prolonged exchange of a mixture of tactical and strategic weapons, with massive destruction of centralize infrastructure(the US gulf coast refining capacity, say) in the first few hours or days; but a fairly large number of civilians who avoid nuclear annihilation in favor of dying in the rubble.

    You could also postulate a scenario where the government's ability to execute coherent strategies like 'seize all the shelters' is what collapses relatively early(for economic reasons, because of a successful nuclear decapitation, some sort of nasty plague, etc.), with various well-armed-but-ill-led armed forces fragments and numerous-but-hapless civilians left to figure things out by trial and error.

    Now, it isn't obvious that any of these scenarios actually makes a short duration bomb shelter worth having access to; but some of them would give you a chance to drive to your tomb and close the door before the supermutants get you.

  5. Re:not totally irrational by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Anyone who is directly responsible for a nuclear war already has a shelter.

  6. Not thinking through the human element... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Let me get this straight. This guy is going to have 1000 rather devoted survivalists ( == probably paranoid) cooped up in an underground cave somewhere? I give it 100 days, tops, before people start shooting each other or using whatever other tools are available. Granted, having a small but reasonably-functioning little village could be nice and robust, but with those kinds of numbers it's inevitable that you're going to have some pretty bitter and high-pressure politics going on, and it's only a matter of time before a lot of people snap, particularly if it really is the "end of the world".

    Unless I personally knew each and every person and knew something about their endurance, sanity, and skills in a high-pressure, low-resource situation, I'll take my chances on the surface, thanks.