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Lon Snook has lived his whole life in cold, snowy, upstate New York. Now, the 65-year-old sales rep and his wife are thinking about where they would like to enjoy their retirement. They’re setting their sights on an upscale gated community, someplace warm that offers on-site restaurants, fitness centers—along with ample fortification, stockpiled food, and homes equipped with air filters designed to keep out life-threatening nuclear, biological, and chemical materials.
Why are they opting to hunker down in full-on survivalist glory in their golden years? “Holy crap, the world is going nuts,” says Snook. “My concern is, I don’t know where things are going. It’s too unstable.”
Welcome to the latest trend in aspirational living: plush prepper communities, allowing you and your loved ones to ride out the apocalypse in true comfort and style.
In the popular imagination, so-called “preppers” are paranoid folks holed up in backwoods bunkers or remote farms—often armed to the teeth, living off the land, and preparing for the demise of civilization as we know it. But lately, wealthier folks have been getting into the survivalist game too. Some executives with big bank accounts are taking matters into their own hands, constructing high-end homes, with bunkers and panic rooms included, in distant parts of the world like New Zealand. Others, like the Snooks, are opting for a ready-made, community approach to surviving world catastrophe—and new luxury developments are cropping up to meet their needs.
courtesy Lon Snook
So the Snooks, who live in Waterloo, NY, aren’t poring over pamphlets for beachfront condos in sunny Florida. Instead the couple is considering moving to the luxe prepper community of Trident Lakes. Located about an hour and a half outside Dallas, the community will consist of subterranean bunkers designed to withstand, well, just about anything.
Trident Lakes, still under construction, will allow its well-heeled homeowners to hole up in one of the 400 to 600 multistory concrete condos partially buried underground. The nearly 700-acre development will offer up such amenities as several Caribbean-style lagoons, an 18-hole golf course, gun ranges, tennis courts, jogging paths, and horseback riding. And if (or when) disaster strikes, they’ll have underground tunnels for getting around, and a DNA vault—you know, in case the human population needs to be re-established.
If being even partially above the surface is too risky, prepper types can also consider moving nearly 200 feet underground into former missile silos converted into high-end condos in north central Kansas. Survival Condo Project opened its first complex in late 2012, a 15-story development that was once home to a nuclear warhead in the 1960s. Its 12 units have all been sold, although no one lives there year-round. (The owner won’t reveal the exact location of the property.)
The second silo, which will have between 14 and 24 luxury condos, plus a rock-climbing wall, indoor pool, bowling alley, shooting range, movie theater, and golf simulator, is expected to be move-in ready by the end of 2018.
But living in the lap of prepper luxury won’t come cheap—it’s well out of the price range of your everyday doomsday prophet. The new Survival Condo units will start at $1.5 million for 920 square feet. Condos at Trident Lakes, due to start opening later this year, are expected to begin at around $800,000.
Lon Snook isn’t sure that he and his wife, a secretary, could afford one of these doomsday-ready digs. But calling a place like Trident Lakes home would sure put his worried mind a bit at ease.
A second (or third) home that’s like an insurance policyTrident Lakes
Trident Lakes bills itself on its website as “a 5-star resort with DEFCON 1 preparedness.” A private airstrip may be built nearby so homeowners can easily fly in if it looks as if World War III is imminent.
The condos are mostly being sold as second or third homes for wealthy owners. About 90% of the surface of each unit will be covered by the earth, with open-air patios with lagoon views to let in some light. If disaster strikes, the doors will automatically seal closed.
But money alone won’t guarantee entrance to the community. Potential owners will be strenuously vetted before they’re invited to move in.
“The response has really been so enthusiastic,” says Jim O’Connor, CEO of Vintuary Holdings, the investors behind Trident Lakes. “We are expecting to sell out.”
The group also has some land in Jackson County, OH, where it is looking into building a second community.
Survival Condo is also intent on expanding into several more silos, in Texas and Idaho.
“People buying bunkers are not going to go away soon,” says Survival Condo owner Larry Hall. “There’s going to be a contest to keep up with demand.”
Most of Hall’s buyers are professionals with families: architects, engineers, lawyers, and businesspeople who want to own a home in an old missile silo as a sort of insurance policy against the world going to hell in a handbasket.
“The threats to our everyday life are increasing,” Hall says. “People are saying if we’ve got the money, it’s a good idea to have a second home that’s a bunker.”
Trident Lakes
When you just don’t have the time to prepare for the end-timeDespite the perks (the gun ranges! the rock-climbing wall!), these sorts of “ready-made survival communities” are unlikely to appeal to the broader prepper community, says Pat Henry, the pseudonymous writer behind The Prepper Journal, a widely read blog. Instead, they’re designed for those who don’t have the time, or inclination, to make their own doomsday preparations, he says.
“It’s really just taking a shortcut to a big-box store of survival supplies that’s already mapped out for you,” Henry says. If he had unlimited funds, he’d be “looking for land far away from other people, with a relatively low population density—with like-minded people who are more self-sufficient.”
Both Trident Lakes and Survival Condo boast off-the-grid, independent water and power sources. At Survival Condo, one of those power sources is a wind turbine. And every unit in the former silo comes with enough food and supplies, like freeze-dried bananas, milk and meat, to last each resident five years.
Did we mention the rock-climbing wall?
Civilization may end, but HOAs are eternalIn addition to the expense, luxury survivalist communities have a few other turn-offs for independent-minded preppers. It may be hard to get a mortgage for these nontraditional homes, says Richard Duarte, a Miami-based personal injury attorney and author of “Surviving Doomsday.” Plus, the communities will have homeowners associations that will regulate some aspects of life.
“Preppers by their nature are very independent and don’t like being told what they can or cannot do,” he says.
For his part, Duarte says he finds these developments, well, depressing. And that’s coming from the man who wrote the book on how to survive the apocalypse.
“You take precautions, you make preparations, and you develop certain skills, like self-defense and first aid, that will help you survive a natural or man-made disaster,” Duarte says. “And then you live your life in a normal way.”
A few don’t mind living year-round undergroundSurvival Condo Project
But not everyone interested in moving into one of these communities is looking at these condos as second or contingency homes. Some are relatively ordinary folks, without millions in the bank, who would like to live there year-round.
Software sales rep Tom Kipfer, 49, of Powell, OH, is looking at Trident Lakes’ proposed second community in Jackson County, OH. His wife, an elementary school music teacher, grew up nearby.
The couple was considering buying a small farm where they could live out their golden years, but were attracted by the amenities—and safety—of Trident Lakes.
“People do a lot of crazy things these days,” says Kipfer, who keeps on hand ample supplies of freeze-dried food, flashlights, and extra batteries … just in case. “Why should the president be the only one to survive a nuclear collapse?”
Survival Condo Project
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