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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."

34 of 150 comments (clear)

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

    #MATH

    1. Re:so... up to 100 customers then? by 7-Vodka · · Score: 4, Funny

      Unless he started with an imaginary customer.

      --

      Liberty.

  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 ColdWetDog · · Score: 3, Funny

      Mien Fuhrer! I can walk!

      --
      Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
    3. 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.

    4. 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...

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

      There are people out there with the attitude of "why work and stockpile food when your armaments can ensure food from your neighbors?"

      The problem is that in the country, people need skills like knowing how to grow crops, irrigation, weather, what types of livestock are best for the land and for trade, how to build a farm for most effective growth, how to handle coyotes, pumas, and other predators, dealing with rats and other vermin, maintaining a livable home, making sure one has enough firewood, making sure drinking water is sanitary, basic sanitation, first aid, basic/advanced medical knowledge, knowing plants and what is edible versus what will kill you, how to store food for longest life and minimizing rot and rodent inroads, how to get animals and crops to a trading post, bazaar, or farmer's market, how to keep vehicles working when the nearest mechanic would be days if one had to walk, how to deal with two-legged vermin, how to deal with trash, burying the dead so it doesn't cause a sanitation hazard, keeping grass low to protect against snakes, and many other things that if listed would be paragraphs long.

      A person in the city just needs cunning, and they can thrive. Knowing how to manipulate other people is the sole skill needed to eke out a living in urban areas. One can have a well-off life being an absolute parasite and produce nothing.

      Now, take the city people, and try to make them deal with "real" life. Not a life with food trucks coming in at all hours to restock the nearest Starbucks or Wal-Mart, but having to actually grow/kill what they eat. With no other skillsets, they will go the route of what they can seize by force. Even if a farm is well defended, unless one has a militia with 24/7 guards, someone will be coming in after dark to set fire to buildings just out of "if I can't have it, nobody can" attitude. We saw that with Katrina where people's houses were turned into their funeral pyres because they defended their place successfully, but couldn't stay up 24/7 or see people intruding at night. Yes, those people will starve, but they will take the food producers with them.

      What is one's best bet? Live at least 50-100 miles away from a city. That is enough distance that average cars will not have enough gas to cover, and cars that do will be stuck in permanent traffic jams (the last hurricane from Houston had people trying to leave three days in advance... and roads were so bad that there were people still stuck on the interstates when the winds hit.) So, while the hive-people fight each other for scraps of fuel, areas past the no-man's land will be relatively safe.

    6. Re:To ride out the end of civilization by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 2

      Deception, theft, betrayal, and violent death are certainly common outcomes; but that's the major reason(second only to the fact that even small-scale division of labor beats the hell out of farming alone) why cooperation is rewarded: It is very difficult to prepare yourself against all acts of violence or deception. It is easier to have people know that yes, they could stab you while your back is turned; but they'll be shitting teeth for weeks when your displeased kin group shows up for revenge if they actually try it...

      (Also, just as a matter of terminology, concepts like 'socialism' aren't really very well defined, if they mean anything at all, on the scale we are talking about here. Only once you have a nation state, some amount of surplus production, a mechanism(usually currency, since agricultural commodities are heavy and perishable) for distributing or redistributing that surplus, and some degree of fraying in legacy social frameworks does it really make sense to start using words that more or less imply positions about how state power should be deployed to modify economic outcomes. It also helps to have enough technology that your society has capital goods other than agricultural land and enough bureaucratic development that the state can actually execute policies in any useful sense.)

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

      I tried camping once. The experience helped shape my current "head for a decent bar located as close as possible to something worth nuking and attempt to be vaporized with a gin and tonic in hand" strategy for apocalypse management...

  3. not totally irrational by iggymanz · · Score: 2

    nuclear weapons exist. you might make it to your shelter.

    1. Re:not totally irrational by TFAFalcon · · Score: 2

      Well there are two ways that things may go : either a quick nuclear war, where you're unlikely to even know the war is happening before you're vaporized, or a slow buildup to a war. And if it's slow I can guarantee you the government it going to seize all shelters for 'vital personnel'.

    2. 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.

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

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

  4. EOW scam by shuz · · Score: 4, Informative

    The Mayan calendar is base 20 with the first place only going to 18. This year represents the end of the 13th "great cycle"(13.0.0.0.0). That means that there have been 12 "end of the world events" preceding this year. So the next real end of the calendar doesn't happen until 4000 something when we reach the 20th great cycle. But then it will just start all over with 1.0.0.0.0.0. In short this is NOT the end of the Mayan Calendar.

    --
    There is or can be built a machine that can simulate any physical object. -Church-Turing principle
    1. Re:EOW scam by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      The Mayan calendar is base 20 with the first place only going to 18. This year represents the end of the 13th "great cycle"(13.0.0.0.0). That means that there have been 12 "end of the world events" preceding this year. So the next real end of the calendar doesn't happen until 4000 something when we reach the 20th great cycle. But then it will just start all over with 1.0.0.0.0.0. In short this is NOT the end of the Mayan Calendar.

      Wrong! The great catastrophic event killing large amounts of people around the globe did happen early this morning. Don't believe the media hype - it's just a cover up.

      The event only killed people below ground.

    2. Re:EOW scam by paiute · · Score: 2

      The event only killed people below ground.

      12/20: The Earth Fracked Back.

      --
      If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
  5. Welcome to the Vault by KagatoLNX · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This is so Fallout that it hurts.

    --
    I think Mauve has the most RAM. --PHB (Dilbert Comic)
  6. Re:Fools by Randomish · · Score: 3, Informative

    Uh... isn't that what most mainstream religions do now?

  7. Obligatory Dr. Strangelove quotes by stox · · Score: 5, Funny

    General "Buck" Turgidson: Doctor, you mentioned the ratio of ten women to each man. Now, wouldn't that necessitate the abandonment of the so-called monogamous sexual relationship, I mean, as far as men were concerned?

    Dr. Strangelove: Regrettably, yes. But it is, you know, a sacrifice required for the future of the human race. I hasten to add that since each man will be required to do prodigious... service along these lines, the women will have to be selected for their sexual characteristics which will have to be of a highly stimulating nature.

    Ambassador de Sadesky: I must confess, you have an astonishingly good idea there, Doctor.

    --
    "To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
  8. Re:For the right price... by cbiltcliffe · · Score: 3, Funny

    I bet there'll be a bunch listed on real estate sites at firesale prices starting Dec 22.

    --
    "City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
  9. 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.

  10. Why would anyone want to ride out the apocalypse? by reubenavery · · Score: 2

    Never could understand that. If the Apocalypse is coming, let me and my family be its first victims. A good clean death would be much preferable to a pathetic existence on the brink of starvation in a devastated world.

  11. Strong message my ass. by LoRdTAW · · Score: 2

    This is the best:
    "Our people have a survivor mentality, but theyâ(TM)re not survivalists,â he said. âoeTheyâ(TM)re not hoarding food and guns and ammo and camo gear in their garage or their basement. Instead, they bought Vivos."

    My bet is he caters to overly paranoid people with too much money. So what happens when the dust settles and his clients crawl out of their little luxury caves to find the earth is a wasteland? Then what? Go back inside and commit suicide? Where will they find food? How do they adapt to a post apocalyptic world? Be sure to bring the entire family, I am sure the kids will love it!

    If the earth is about to end due to some event the last thing I would want to do is crawl inside a cave and emerge only to find a dead wasteland or a chaotic world in a downward spiral. I would rather Major Kong that event and ride it into oblivion.

  12. Re:Why would anyone want to ride out the apocalyps by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 2

    There are probably a billion, maybe two, people that we could ask this question even without the downfall of civilization as we know it; but I'm not sure that they could tell us anything useful...

  13. Not in the Simpsons but should be by istartedi · · Score: 3, Funny

    (In Homer voice) So it's fears you're selling, ay?I'd like a dozen fears please. That costs HOW MUCH??? I'd like one fear please. What? Can I get just a taste? Mmmmmmm.... fear.

    --
    For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
  14. Welcome by Cryacin · · Score: 3, Funny

    To Vaultec's Vault 13. Please see the overseer on the way in.

    --
    Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
  15. Re:Why would anyone want to ride out the apocalyps by Johann+Lau · · Score: 2

    Many many many million people live on the brink of starvation in a devastated world (it's no use to them that *we* have it nice, is it, so to them the world is all fucked up already) as we speak and have for ages.

    Also, consider this -- not the situation as a whole, but between these two. And I totally don't mean this tongue in cheek.. it's easy to say "fuck it", but as long as someone you care about still wants to live, what will you do? There is no good clean death either, other than falling asleep and not waking up at ripe old age, which is not an option here. So... could you kill a loved one? Or leave them to do it themselves? What you say now would have to condense in some (in)action then, and I kinda doubt that, I hope you take it as a compliment :P

    I rather guess you and I and most everybody would try to survive for as long as we can. People adapt quickly, too. We survived the stone age, the dark ages, a lot of shit compared to which the apocalypse would still be kinda tame. It would be horrible to us, and compared to what we are used to, to our cozy little lives, but absolutely not on a total scale and to what is going on on this planet in general. Many people are enduring worse right now. We might not be among them, maybe we won't cut it, but we'd die trying, I would more or less bet on that.

  16. Re:For the right price... by Miamicanes · · Score: 2

    Wait until Saturday, when somebody goes up to the 2k12 apocalypse-anticipators and says, "Hey, don't feel bad... it's not the end of the world"

    (...roflmao... "not the end of the world" *cough*, *cough*).

  17. One question by JasoninKS · · Score: 2

    One question...once the place is filled with apocalypse nuts, can we seal the door and just leave them in there for good?

  18. Pets by Nefarious+Wheel · · Score: 2

    Yes, but will he look after my pet?

    --
    Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
  19. And in the end the danger was deeply ironic... by SuperKendall · · Score: 2

    ...when it turned out the event the Myans were warning about was an excessive outgassing of radon by rocks in underground mines.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
  20. Looks like an old Bell System facility by Animats · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The Nebraska facility is almost certainly a former Bell System facility. It has a classic AT&T microwave tower and high bays for switching equipment. AT&T used to have underground centers across the country for survivable communications. Here's one that is for sale.

    There are a surprising number of bunkers for sale in the US. I see some on the market that were being offered a decade ago. The costs of refurbishing and operating a big military facility in the middle of nowhere are high, and few people bother. Some have done so, and then realized they don't really want to live there.

  21. 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.