Tag Archives: retreats

Surreal estate

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You know, when youre a survivalist shopping for a chunk of property, there are certain words or phrases in the listing that jump out at you and make you think “hmmm…that might be just the place I need”. You know, phrases like “year round spring”, or “bordered by National Forest”, that sort of thing. Or, how about the phrase “Local lore claims that there are many hidden bunkers on the property holding the needed provisions to protect and support the members of the group. Current owners know of one bunker, have never looked for more.”

Ok, color me interested.

Backstory: about twentyfive years ago there was a happy little religious cult called the Church Universal and Triumphant (CUT) that wound up becoming newsworthy when the feds raided one of their properties and basically found them to be building bunkers and stoking them with some rather serious (but mostly legal) firepower. I forget what the original issue was. Anyway, once the leader of the church moved on the whole thing sorta fell by the wayside and, as far as I know, is now just a handful of believers scattered here and there.

Apparently one of their “Strongholds” is for sale.

121.76 ACRES OF HIGH BITTERROOT MOUNTAIN VALLEY, CLOSE TO IDAHO BORDER. SURROUNDED BY FOREST SERVICE; 2+ M. OF CREEK RUNS THROUGH IT! PREVIOUSLY PURCHASED AS THE ‘FINAL HOLD POSITION’ property of the religious sect CHURCH UNIVERSAL AND TRIUMPHANT (“CUT”).

I’ve seen pictures of some of CUT’s bunkers and shelters before. The ones I saw are not the least bit amateurish. At the height of their membership they had the money to throw around. (I remember the news article with ATF pointing out the Barret 82A1’s they had…. not cheap guns.)

I’d imagine the biggest drawback to a property like this is that if the apocalypse does occur, members of the church my come back to claim it. That could be…inconvenient.

Don’t kid yourself, properties with bunkers (and, in some cases, tunnel systems) are not unheard of out here. They’re just usually pretty low profile…but they are out there. A thousand years from now archaeologists will have a hell of a time wondering what sort of civilization ritually buried weapons in plastic tubes.

Articles on shelters for the ‘elite’

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Two articles on ‘elite’ shelters on the same day. Makes me think their marketing people must have sent out press releases or something. I maintain that the Vivos thing is like buying a timeshare on Mars – it’s yours..on paper.

Anyway, my skepticism aside, heres the articles:

As we roll down US Highway 41 in Terre Haute, Indiana , my guide insists I give him my iPhone. Then he tosses me a satin blindfold. The terms of our trip were clear—I wasn’t to know where we were going or how we got there.That’s because we’re on our way to the undisclosed location of an underground bunker designed to survive the end of the world, whatever form that apocalypse takes.

And this one:

When the end of the world comes, even wealthy people will not be spared.

Unless, of course, they’ve managed to buy themselves a spot in a massive underground apocalypse bunker.

Whilst is handy, because the super rich have been invited to buy up a place in a five star shelter in Rothenstein, Germany, which is designed to allow them to live underground for a year and then emerge “when the worst is over”.

Just 34 “high worth” families will be welcomed into the European doomsday den, with prices only available on application.

If you can afford to, essentially, throw away that kind of money on a heavily-armored timeshare, you can afford to simply have your own built and maintain your privacy, safety, and control.

They’re nice to look at, but when the zombies are roaming the streets, the last thing I’m going to care about is if the floors are Italian marble or Brazilian zebrawood.

Article – Underground home was built as Cold War-era hideaway

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I’ve seen pictures of this place before,  but this is the first article I’ve seen with this much detail. But I admire the kitschy over-the-top attempts to make an underground concrete room look like a green backyard. Then again, isn’t Vegas home of fake Eiffel Towers, Stutes of Liberty, and enormous fake boobs?

The underground house at 3970 Spencer St. was built for comfort, too, with two hot tubs, a sauna and an in-ground pool in a room larger than some houses in the valley.

It was also constructed to withstand a nuclear blast. It had to be. Girard “Jerry” B. Henderson, who had the home built in 1978, planned to wait out the end of the world inside the structure. Now it’s on the market for $1.7 million, which includes the two-bedroom underground house, the one-bedroom underground guest house, the two-bedroom, two-story caretaker’s house, a four-car garage and more than 1 acre of surface property.

“I’ve been told when he built it, he had a million dollars of marble imported from Italy,” said Winston King of Kingly Properties, which is handling the sale of the house. “It’s here on the fireplace and around the pool now.”

When it was built, the only signs of the house on the surface were an unusual number of ground-mounted air-conditioning units camouflaged by clusters of large rocks. A few larger rocks concealed stairways and an elevator. A caretaker’s house was added later, and the main entrance to the underground house now runs through it.

When visitors reach the ground level, they’re in the front yard of the house looking at the entrance to the 40-foot-by-46-foot room. To the left are the dance floor and the stage. The décor still greatly reflects the original owners’ tastes, from the indoor fountains and waterfalls to the abundance of pink in the kitchen and bathroom.

“They had it all down here,” said King, opening up an artificial rock to reveal an underground outdoor grill. “This vents through the tree behind it.”