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Vivos Founder Builds an Underground City Where You Can Ride Out the Apocalypse
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."
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.
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
This is so Fallout that it hurts.
I think Mauve has the most RAM. --PHB (Dilbert Comic)
Uh... isn't that what most mainstream religions do now?
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. "
Unless he started with an imaginary customer.
Liberty.
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......
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.
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.
Anyone who is directly responsible for a nuclear war already has a shelter.
(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"?
To Vaultec's Vault 13. Please see the overseer on the way in.
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
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.
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.