Shelters including billiard rooms, cinemas, underground gardens, spas, gyms and even bars have seen a huge surge in demand within the last year as the elite look to survive the nuclear fallout.
US company Atlas Survival Shelters will build 1000 nuclear bunkers within the next 12 months, having built only 50 shelters in 2016.
300 of the new bunkers will be in Japan and 100 in South Korea as both countries are menaced by the aggressive nuclear programme of North Korea’s Kim Jong-un.
The company expects to build around 10 bunkers in the UK next year, and has also built several £150,000 shelters for British A-Listers in Hollywood.
The project’s founder Ron Hubbard said: “Not having a bunker is a bit like not having car insurance.
“It’s irresponsible in a world where people want to kill you just for being an infidel and are trying to get hold of plutonium.”
Prices start at £15,000 for a state-of-the-art nuclear bunker, although this is likely to be a no-frills version with less access to luxuries like billiard rooms and spas.
Another company called Survival Condo has repurposed an old missile silo in Kansas as 12 family homes. The bunkers come with LED “windows” looking out at footage of the prairie outside – a nice touch unless the apocalypse does come, in which case those views might not be so nice.
Meanwhile Vivos has transformed disused munitions stores in South Dakota into a small town that could have up to 5000 inhabitants, including a cinema, classroom, doctor’s practice, gardens, a spa and a gym. It’s designed to hold people underground for up to a year.
Another Vivos project located beneath a hillside in Rothenstein, Germany, is valued at £800 million in total and can survive a nuclear strike.
News of the surge in uptake of nuclear bunkers comes as the US and North Korea have escalated furious rhetoric and threatened to destroy one another.