Because why would you put the survival of humanity first when you could store your precious gold, wine, and cars instead? The fate of the world can be someone else’s problem, apparently
The super-rich have access to a the world’s finest luxury goods – and that includes doomsday bunkers, as prepping for the Armageddon apparently has now become tres chic.
A vast network of underground vaults is currently being carved into the Swiss Alps, with the heavily fortified space offering the ultra-wealthy a secure haven for storing everything from priceless art and gold to vintage Ferraris and expensive wine, as per the New York
While the ultra-wealthy could put the fate of humanity first and build mass bunkers to hold a large number of people, they’d rather ram it full with gold and wine.
Swiss businessman Thomas Gasser, chairman of the board of Brünig Mega Safe, is the man behind the project beneath the Brünig Pass near the village of Lungern, and the apparent poster boy for conspicuous consumption.
Gasser’s complex will house approximately 20 private vaults securely buried beneath over 100 metres of solid rock – a natural fortress designed to deter criminals. Developers claim the security will rival that of the Swiss National Bank.
But a ticket in doesn’t come cheap.
Each subterranean cave is available for purchase on a 99-year lease, with prices beginning at nearly 1 million Swiss francs – roughly equivalent to £918,600.
Gasser’s family-run company has decades of specialised experience in quarrying, underground operations, and heavy excavation work in the Swiss terrain.
So, when the end of days does come rolling on around, don’t be as so gauche as to assume you’ll just drive up to the front gates in your Rolls-Royce La Rose Noire Droptail.
No. As per Gasser himself: “You’ll first have to drive through a special checkpoint and get out of your vehicle: there will be several security checks, which obviously won’t be disclosed to the public.”
The location of the ultimate doomsday bunkers is such a fiercely guarded secret that even reporters weren’t shown the future entrance to the complex. This must stop the riff-raff getting in and tainting the place with their ‘commonness’, come Armageddon.
The project has drawn mixed reactions from residents of the tiny village of Lungern in the Alps.
Some questioned why their small mountain town needs a bunch of luxury bunkers built for billionaires, with one resident pointing out that “they’re building something for people who already have enough money”.
Others were more sardonic, stating that they looked forward to seeing Ferraris belonging to their new bunker “neighbours” racing along the windy Alpine roads.
Switzerland is no stranger to storing valuables deep beneath its mountains. Over the years, a number of former military bunkers have been repurposed as fortified storage facilities and highly secure data centres. Basically, it’s like a less magical Mines of Moria – or Khazad-dûm, to those in the know – up in them there hills.
This project in Lungern takes the whole ‘store your riches in a mountain’ idea to another level, with the sprawling facility aimed at wealthy clients from around the globe looking for a protected, safe place to stash their most valuable assets as we continue to soldier on through global turmoil and uncertain times.
As for celeb doomsday preppers, bunker-loving billionaire Mark Zuckerberg is one of the most notorious. The Meta CEO keeps a home base in Palo Alto in California, but also has a fortified Hawaiian compound complete with an underground shelter, private food and water supplies, and an escape hatch.
And OpenAI CEO Sam Altman revealed in a 2016 interview with The New Yorker that he had an arrangement with Peter Thiel – the co-founder of PayPal – that if a major global catastrophe or societal collapse occurred, they would head to Thiel’s rural property on New Zealand’s South Island.
Ironic, considering if we look to doomsday films such as the Terminator, it’s a pesky little AI called Skynet that ends it all to begin with. Go figure.