Hodge bought into the first of a proposed nationwide group of 20 fortified, underground shelters — the Vivos shelter network — that are intended to protect those inside for up to a year from catastrophes such as a nuclear attack, killer asteroids or tsunamis, according to the project’s developers.
“It’s an investment in life,” says Hodge, a Teamsters union representative. “I want to make sure I have a place I can take me and my family if that worst-case scenario were to happen.”
There are signs that underground shelters, almost-forgotten relics of the Cold War era, are making a comeback.
The Vivos network, which offers partial ownerships similar to a timeshare in underground shelter communities, is one of several ventures touting escape from a surface-level calamity.
Radius Engineering in Terrell, Texas, has built underground shelters for more than three decades, and business has never been better, says Walton McCarthy, company president.
The company sells fiberglass shelters that can accommodate 10 to 2,000 adults to live underground for one to five years with power, food, water and filtered air, McCarthy says.
The shelters range from $400,000 to a $41 million facility Radius built and installed underground that is suitable for 750 people, McCarthy says. He declined to disclose the client or location of the shelter.
“We’ve doubled sales every year for five years,” he says.Other shelter manufacturers include Hardened Structures of Colorado and Utah Shelter Systems, which also report increased sales.
The shelters have their critics. Ken Rose, a history professor at California State University-Chico and author of One Nation Underground: The Fallout Shelter in American Culture, says underground shelters were a bad idea a half-century ago and they’re a bad idea now.
“A terrorist with a nuke in a suitcase pales in comparison to what the Cold War had to offer in the 1950s and ’60s, which was the potential annihilation of the human race,” he says.
Steve Davis, president of Maryland-based All Hands Global Emergency Management Consulting, also is skeptical.
All Hands has helped more than 100 public and private sector clients with emergency management and homeland security services, according to its website.
The types of cataclysms envisioned by some shelter manufacturers “are highly unlikely compared to what we know is going to happen,” Davis says.
“We know there is going to be a major earthquake someday on the West Coast. We know a hurricane is going to hit Florida, the Gulf Coast, the East Coast,” he says. “We support reasonable preparedness. We don’t think it’s necessary to burrow into the desert.”
The Vivos network is the idea of Del Mar, Calif., developer Robert Vicino.
Vicino, who launched the Vivos project last December, says he seeks buyers willing to pay $50,000 for adults and $25,000 for children.
The company is starting with a 13,000-square-foot refurbished underground shelter formerly operated by the U.S. government at an undisclosed location near Barstow, Calif., that will have room for 134 people, he says.
Vicino puts the average cost for a shelter at $10 million.
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