THE NEW YORK TIMES, SUNDAY, JUNE 28, 2020 MBRE 11bulent world. For many, the decision to
build a bunker was made before the coro-
navirus pandemic surfaced, but they say
that they now feel prepared for the next lo-
cal or global crisis.
Aaron, who spoke on the condition that
his full name not be used to protect his pri-
vacy, said he bought a bunker three years
ago to keep his family in the Washington,
D.C., area safe in a variety of situations. “If
something happens, I can put the family in
there, or if I’m gone, my wife can lock the
family in there,” he said. “Not just the coro-
navirus, or civil unrest. Even in envi-
ronmental things” — like earthquakes and
tornadoes — “my family is protected.”
Aaron, who has three teenagers and is in
his mid-40s, said he was currently using his
1,100-square-foot bunker as an office. “Parts
of the bunker are off limits to all my chil-
dren, like any of the security rooms, the
weapons room, the food and storage room,
the pantry,” he said.
Other amenities include an aboveground
“safe room” to be used “if you need to
quickly get away from something immedi-
ately. Basically, a panic room.”
He bought his bunker from a company
called Hardened Structures based in Vir-
ginia Beach, one of the many bunker build-
ers across the country.
Some buyers go through a bunker broker
to find a shelter that fits their needs. Jona-
than Rawles is the owner and manager of
Survival Realty Brokerage Services, a na-
tional company based in Idaho that works
with agents and brokers specializing in re-
mote, off-grid bunker-type property.
“There is continual demand for people
specializes in safe rooms and bomb shel-
ters, and advertises one modular unit that it
says “feels as close to home as possible.”
The modular 8-by-12-foot (not including
the entry corridor) mini model costs
$49,000 and includes a mud room, a decon-
tamination room, a gas-tight marine door,
an air-filtration system, a blast valve and a
generator pod. Products at Atlas start at
about $400 a square foot, ranging from
$9,000 for an inflatable shelter to $5 million
for the company’s “platinum series shelter.”
Ron Hubbard, president of Atlas, makes,
among other shelter products, monolithic
domes that “meet FEMA standards for pro-
viding near-absolute protection.”ATLAS’S DEMONSTRATION bunker-building
videos on YouTube signed up 47,000 new
subscribers in April, and a video of a luxury
bunker installation has gotten nearly six
million views. Atlas has also had a big up-
tick in calls and orders since the coro-
navirus pandemic began.
“But you do not need to go into a bunker
to save yourself from the coronavirus,” Mr.
Hubbard said. “No one has bought a shelter
from me to hide during the pandemic, but
many people have bought it becauseof thepandemic. They feel that this is the begin-
ning of something a lot bigger, and they feel
it in their gut.”
Another bunker owner, Roberta, who
lives in New Mexico and who also asked
that her full name not be used to protect her
privacy, bought her off-grid bunker from
Atlas Survival Shelters four years ago. “I
believe everyone deserves a better chance
of survival, not just me,” she said.
She calls her underground shelter her
“woman cave,” and it’s equipped with a
kitchen, an entertainment center, a toilet
and shower, a mud room and a place to
sleep. Roberta, 59, married and retired with
grown children, wants to be able to provide
a safe haven for her family at a moment’s
notice.
She gets into her shelter through what
looks like a rickety shed hidden in plain
sight on a deserted plot of land that she
owns. Inside the shed, she opens a floor
hatch and steps down a steep set of stairs to
a steel submarine door. Inside, just past the
bunker’s mud room is the living room,
where a sign reads, “My husband needed
more space, so I locked him outside.”
Aaron, the bunker buyer who lives in the
Washington, D.C., area, found HardenedStructures on Google and said the company
had a good reputation online. When the
family was installing an in-ground pool, he
decided to have Hardened Structures put in
a bunker at the same time.
“So no one knew what we were building,”
he said. “I’m not a prepper. My parents were
ranchers who do old-school canning, deer
hunting, that kind of thing. So I took little
things from them.”BRIAN V. CAMDEN,principal of Hardened
Structures, has been in business for 32
years. A majority of his projects are under-
ground bunkers beneath fortified homes in
locations ranging from Brooklyn to ranches
out West, as well as contracted military
work in the Middle East. “I collaborate with
architects, engineers, Navy Seals,” Mr.
Camden said. “We have ex-military em-
ployees specializing in C.B.R.N. — chemical
biological radio nuclear analysis.”
Hardened Structures also works with a
company called Red Team Analysis, former
Navy SEALs who teach bunker-breaching
to National Security Agency officials. When
Hardened Structures is building a bunker,
Mr. Camden said, Red Team Analysis su-
pervises the work. Unlike Northeast
Bunkers or Atlas, Hardened Structures
does not design steel enclosures, but rather
cast reinforced concrete, which he says
would shield the interior from an electro-
magnetic pulse or geomagnetic storm.
The company’s underground shelters are
made from cast-in-place reinforced con-
crete. The prices range from $600 to $3,000
per square foot. Factors affecting the cost
include blast overpressure (thickness of the
concrete walls and structure) and whether
it is designed to withstand chemical, biolog-
ical and radiological dispersion, and con-
ventional weapons — “also known as weap-
ons of mass destruction,” Mr. Camden said.
“Other factors,” he added, “include the
client’s secrecy requirements, the site
geotechnical makeup, and the extent of
E.M.P. shielding within the shelter itself,” he
added, referring to electromagnetic pulse
shielding.
With new business booming, bunker in-
stallers are also keeping busy with their
previous clients.
Recently, Mr. Woodworth, of Northeast
Bunkers, returned from an installation job
on Chebeague Island, in Casco Bay, Maine,
and said he was so busy that clients were
being wait-listed. Bunker upgrades have
also become much more popular among Mr.
Woodworth’s clients, and people who were
putting in just six months’ worth of food are
now putting in two years’ worth.
“I’m just a businessman who deals with
paranoid people,” he said, “and it seems like
the parameters of paranoia are changing
every day.”Going to Ground: Is This the New Normal?
Top, a schematic of a shelter in the Genesis
series from Hardened Structures and, right, an
illustration of a related interior. Above, an Atlas
Survival Shelters bunker under a house is
shown as doing double duty for wine storage.
Below, an elaborate Hardened Structures
bunker being built into a hillside.ABOVE AND BELOW, ILLUSTRATIONS BY HARDENED STRUCTURES; BELOW LEFT, ATLAS SURVIVAL SHELTERSSome buyers go through
a bunker broker to find
a shelter that fits their
specific needs.that are looking to find more of a sustain-
able future for themselves, for their fam-
ilies,” Mr. Rawles said. “A lot of real estate
markets only focus on housing in the urban
areas, suburban areas, exurbs, and there is
very much a missed opportunity for people
who are looking to live off-grid, wanting to
live remote, or actually looking to secure a
property, whether that’s a bunker or a more
secure and sustainable home.”
Mr. Rawles pairs his clients with bunker-
building companies in the United States and
says his company has a wide range of cli-
ents. “This market and desire for security
cuts across all levels of society — social, po-
litical, racial, religious,” he said. “People are
looking for the opportunity to secure the
family’s future, to have a more sustainable
future, and part of that may be having a
bunker.”
Mr. Woodworth at Northeast Bunkers
said that recent inquiries had come from
across the United States, and worldwide.
The farthest installation he’s ever done?
The Caribbean. “That one went by truck,
then by barge, then by truck.”
THE BASIC MODELat Northeast Bunkers is a
cylindrical steel vessel eight feet in diame-
ter, in 13- or 20-foot lengths, welded from
quarter-inch plate steel and equipped with
an entrance hatch on top. Standard features
include rust-resistant exterior paint, cedar
plank flooring, zero-VOC (volatile organic
compounds) interior finishes, two vent
ports, floor hatches for storage, and an
emergency exit hatch.
Optional features include power connec-
tions (your choice of 12-volt or 120-volt), a
potable-water system, a septic system, a
bathroom, a kitchen, bunks and a blast door.
“All depending on what you order, and all
materials are made in America,” Mr. Wood-
worth said. “We try to get people as safe as
possible within a reasonable budget.” The
company’s bunkers range from $25,000 to
$35,000.
In the 1950s and ’60s, Cold War tensions
and the threat of nuclear conflict gave rise
to demand for home fallout shelters, with
endorsements from both the Eisenhower
and Kennedy administrations and a prolif-
eration of pamphlets (and coupons) for
such structures across America, as well as a
vote in Congress in 1961 for $169 million
with a big push to mark, locate and stock
fallout shelters in existing public and pri-
vate buildings.
Back then, bunkers were economical in
construction and basic in design, consisting
of rot-resistant plywood panels and con-
crete blocks, buried and backfilled with
sand or gravel. Today, most shelters are fab-
ricated from steel, like the ones Northeast
Bunkers makes, or from cinder blocks or
concrete. Others are made from airform — a
highly engineered reusable and inflatable
spray mold to be covered in concrete to cre-
ate monolithic domes — or from renovated
missile silos, and many are completely new
high-end construction.
Today, some underground shelter compa-
nies market military-grade materials, such
as Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Air Fil-
tration Systems, gas-tight and waterproof
doors, and six-point locking systems. Oth-
ers offer the option of home entertainment
theaters, game rooms, wine cellars, gun
racks, even underground swimming pools.
Atlas Survival Shelters, a fallout shelter
company based in Sulphur Springs, Texas,
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HARDENED STRUCTURES