In a government study in Pleasant Hill, California, 99 prisoners were confined in underground lockdown for two weeks an experiment which would never receive ethics approval these days. When they emerged, "everyone was in good health and spirits", according to a spokesperson for the group. It seemed people could adapt and make do — just so long as they knew the situation was temporary.
It was like a period of submergence in a submarine: cramped and uncomfortable, but tolerable as long as a plan to surface was in place, a destination in time plotted. This was precisely the model Hall was operating on — though rather than two weeks, Hall was planning for up to five years in lockdown.
Over 60 metres ft below the surface of the Earth, we looked over racks filled with year shelf-life food stored on the grocery store level — a convincing replica of a supermarket, complete with shopping baskets, an espresso machine behind the counter and a middle-class American aesthetic.
Hall said they needed low black ceilings, beige walls, a tile floor and nicely presented cases because if people were locked in this building and they had to come down here to rifle through cardboard boxes to get their food, they would soon get depressed.
It was also necessary to implement a rule that no one could take more than three days' worth of groceries because shopping is "a social event".
Hall said that "since everything in here is already paid for, you need to encourage people to come down here to smell bread and make a coffee and to chat or barter supplies and services". We visited one of the completed 1,sq ft condos, which felt like a clean, predictable hotel room. I looked out of one of the windows and was shocked to see that it was night outside.
I guessed we must have been underground for more than a few hours at this point. I had completely forgotten we were underground.
Hall picked up a remote control and flicked on a video feed being piped into the "window" — an LED screen — much like you might see in a futuristic film. Oak leaves suddenly shuddered in the foreground just in front of our cars, parked outside the blast door. In the distance, the camouflaged sentry posted at the chain link fence was standing in the same place as when we arrived.
These empty bunkers on the Great Plains have become the largest "prepper" community on the planet Credit: Bradley Garrett. The screens can be loaded up with material or have a live feed piped in, but most people prefer to know what time of day it is than to see a beach in San Francisco or whatever," Hall explained. But all this preparation is for life during lockdown.
Is there any prepping going on for life after the blast doors re-open? I imagine spending time in there with my family, safe and secure, becoming my best version of myself. When you get rid of all the distractions and crap around us keeping us from doing these things, who knows what you can accomplish? The bunker is imagined by some as a chrysalis for transformation into a "model self", where preparations lead to a perfectly routine existence after which time a person can emerge as a superior version of themselves.
Many of us experienced this playing out during the early weeks of the Covid pandemic, which for some brought relief from unwanted travel obligations and for others provided a productive period of isolation and privacy. A utopia for some was a disaster for others, who were without the resources to hunker down and were left jobless, sick, and dead. So in this sense, the rational, orderly, planned space of the bunker is the antithesis of what some see as the pointless acceleration and accumulation of modern life.
These narratives contrast the media's representation of prepping and bunker building as a gloomy, dystopian practice. My research found that prepping is ultimately hopeful, if a little selfish. Selfish because the preppers are looking out for themselves, given that they don't trust the government to do so.
However, as many of them have made clear to me during the current pandemic, the fact that they are self-sufficient has alleviated pressure on critical resources and health-care facilities, putting an altruistic spin on what looks to be a self-centred endeavour. Unlike survivalists, the goal of the prepper is not to exit society, but to help prop it up through personal preparedness.
This cross section shows the full scale of the bunker, built in an old missile silo Credit: SurvivalCondo. One bunker builder in California explained to me that that "no one wants to go into the bunker as much as they want to come out of the bunker".
As such, the bunker is a form of transportation, but one that instead of transporting bodies and material through space, it transports them through time.
To preppers, the bunker is both a controlled laboratory in which to build better selves, a place to reassert lost agency and a chrysalis from which to be reborn after a necessary "reset" of a messy, complicated and fragile world.
In the light of the Covid pandemic it has become clear that the preppers are not social anomalies, but gatekeepers to understanding the contemporary human condition — just as survivalists of the past were a reflection of Cold War anxieties.
As Hall suggested at the end of our tour:. The defensive capability of this structure only existed to the extent needed to protect a weapon, a missile — this bunker was a weapon system.
So, we converted a weapon of mass destruction into the complete opposite. But what the preppers are building is less important than our need to understand that prepping refracts underlying anxieties created by inequality, austerity, shrinking trust in government, despondency about globalisation and the speed of technological and social change.
So it may well be that the future of humanity is not in the stars after all — but deep under the surface of the Earth. This article originally appeared on The Conversation, and is republished under a Creative Commons licence. Join one million Future fans by liking us on Facebook , or follow us on Twitter or Instagram.
If you liked this story, sign up for the weekly bbc. The bunker builders preparing for doomsday. It seemed people could adapt — just so long as they knew the situation was temporary. It would only be a matter of time before disquiet, and worse, started rippling through the group. Hall, however, thinks he has worked out a solution to these potential obstacles. The key to wellbeing underground, he tells me, could be about creating an illusion of normal life.
The fresh produce from here will end up in the general store. Money, in other words, will have no value in the Survival Condo — which is just as well, given the bankruptcy-inducing prices of buying into it in the first place.
One apartment, bought with cash, is designed to feel like a log cabin, with a loft looking down on a fake fireplace flanked by a six-screen display of a snow-capped mountain range. None of those buying into the bunker are in residence at the time of my visit. Other than me, Hall, Lollipop and the on-site maintenance guy, there is no one inside.
Unsurprisingly, the residents are elusive and tight-lipped. One is Tyler Allen, a real estate developer from Florida. However, it has deep roots in human history. In Cappadocia, in the Central Anatolia region of what is now Turkey, there are 22 known large-scale ancient subterranean cities, dug in around BC.
Many still exist. Archaeologists believe that Derinkuyu , the deepest of the 22, reaches 60 metres below the surface and sheltered as many as 20, people, along with their livestock and food stores. It consisted of more than 18 floors of bedrooms, halls, churches, armouries, storage chambers, wells and toilets.
In recent years, bunkers have become not just spaces for human bodies but a place from which to revive things we care about. The US Library of Congress, for instance, has adapted a massive bunker in Virginia and filled it with its film, television and sound collections. The goal is to prevent another terrible loss such as the torching of the Great Library of Alexandria 2, years ago.
On level 11 of the Survival Condo, about 50 metres underground, Hall and I visit a 1, sq ft home. I have had the same feeling as walking into a bedroom in a hotel chain. The apartment has never been used. It has a Navajo print rug, a cushy white sofa set and a stone electric fireplace with a flat panel TV over it. A marble countertop extends to a bar separating the living room from the kitchen, which is filled with high-end appliances.
I look at one of the windows and am shocked to see it is dark outside. My instant, physiological reaction is to assume we must have been underground for longer than I thought. Then I realise my mistake. The scene depicted is the view from the front, at the surface-level entrance of the condo. It is daytime, breezy and green outside.
But when this video was made is not necessarily obvious — maybe there is a time lapse and I am watching a prerecorded past I am convinced is the present. The thought sends a prickle of unease down my spine.
After lockdown, Hall could choose precisely which material to share with the other occupants. The screen goes blank. I wonder if this whole thing has actually been funded by the Department of Defense as a human Petri dish, the next iteration of those s cold war human experiments.
Not telling the residents they are partaking in an experiment would be the key to its rigour. It was, he says, like living in a casino. Unable to confirm that the passing of time correlated to what his clocks were telling him, or who was coming or going outside the bunker, he felt totally isolated. The LED screens changed all this, by reintroducing a circadian rhythm. She has filmed Central Park from her Manhattan loft, during all four seasons, day and night, together with the cacophonous sounds of urban life.
Many of the world's elite, including hedge fund managers, sports stars and tech executives Bill Gates is rumored to have bunkers at all his properties have chosen to design their own secret shelters to house their families and staff. Apocalypse now: Our incessant desire to picture the end of the world. The company's plate steel bunkers, which are designed to last for generations, can hold a minimum of one year's worth of food per resident and withstand earthquakes.
But while some want to bunker down alone, others prefer to ride out the apocalypse in a community setting that offers an experience a bit closer to the real world. Credit: JDM estate agents. Developers of community shelters like these often acquire decommissioned military bunkers and missile silos built by the United States or Soviet governments -- sites that would cost hundreds of millions of dollars to build today.
The fortified structures are designed to withstand a nuclear strike and come equipped with power systems, water purification systems, blast valves, and Nuclear-Biological-Chemical NBC air filtration. Most include food supplies for a year or more, and many have hydroponic gardens to supplement the rations. The developers also work to create well-rounded communities with a range of skills necessary for long-term survival, from doctors to teachers. Vicino says Vivos received a flurry of interest in its shelters around the election from both liberals and conservatives, and completely sold out of spaces in its community shelters in the past few weeks.
Designer ark. The price depends on whether they want a minimalist space or a home with high-end finishes.
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