Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

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."

11 of 150 comments (clear)

  1. 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...

    4. 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...

  2. 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.

  3. 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)
  4. 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. "
  5. Re:so... up to 100 customers then? by 7-Vodka · · Score: 4, Funny

    Unless he started with an imaginary customer.

    --

    Liberty.

  6. 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.