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Inside a missile silo turned luxury doomsday bunker · DEEP INSIGHT

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: In the flattest part of Kansas, where the wind blows
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: fierce and free, you are suddenly not in Kansas anymore.
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Super money gives you superpowers, some say, but here it
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: buys you salvation. Space inside a converted nuclear missile silo
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: turned into a luxury survival bunker full of things most
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: of us will never see, especially when the world has ended.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: What was the cost to buy the abandoned silo itself?
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: 300 000 but that's.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: A bargain right oh yeah yeah there is no denying
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: the engineering feat owner and creator larry hall has achieved
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: here over years of detailed planning okay.
• 0:42
  Speaker 3: This blue box you see is a volcanic ash scrubber we.
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: Have enough diesel fuel to run these for two and
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: a half.
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  Speaker 3: Years just takes care of itself the computers that control
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  Speaker 3: everything this is uh what we call the pet park.
• 0:55
  Speaker 3: People get the feeling that they're outdoors. I have a
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  Speaker 3: lot of people, ultra high net worth individuals that come
• 1:02
  Speaker 3: in here.
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  Speaker 2: And a lot of.
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  Speaker 3: Them, when they first contact me, want to build their
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  Speaker 3: own private bunker. And I say, well, that's good, but
• 1:10
  Speaker 3: why don't you come and look at what I've built?
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  Speaker 3: And then we found out that they value having other
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  Speaker 3: adults to bounce ideas off of, as opposed to having
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  Speaker 3: just their family locked in a smaller facility that they
• 1:21
  Speaker 3: were exclusive to.
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  Speaker 2: So now you're in the bunker. Now you've got other
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: adults saying, what do you think? Like, what's going on?
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: So even billionaires need other people.
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: Yes, they did. And they really appreciated that. So long
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: as it's other billionaires. No, we have a.
• 1:35
  Speaker 3: Couple of people that I would put in the billionaire category.
• 1:38
  Speaker 3: Other people are just successful, self-made professionals. And these people
• 1:43
  Speaker 3: are all very.
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: Down to earth.
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: Down to earth, hundreds of feet under the earth.
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: How many floors do you have in total?
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  Speaker 1: Fifteen.
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: Who chose the red decal? I did, actually.
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: It's quite, you know, emergency end of times. So people
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: don't get to have their names on this, right? No.
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: Just Residential 6. Correct. This is a technical marvel, but
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: needs heavy expertise to run. A huge task in and
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: of itself. You can feel... the intensity of the silence
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: down here, nothing apart from the noise of the ventilation
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  Speaker 1: that's keeping you alive. And you're really gonna wanna have
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: other people around with you.
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: You're just trying to jump your kids on me.
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: The lights go out completely.
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: Well, you turned it off. I did, yeah.
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: But let's say you had a power failure.
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: That didn't interrupt the power. That's a ludicrous question.
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  Speaker 3: Just because this system that's currently in here takes 29
• 2:51
  Speaker 3: seconds or less for the generator to kick in. But
• 2:55
  Speaker 3: the wind turbine is not even connected to the generators.
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: It doesn't use fuel.
• 3:00
  Speaker 3: These are nuclear biological and chemical air filters. These are
• 3:05
  Speaker 3: military grade. They filter out every known pathogen known to man.
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: They literally breathe different air here. And you immediately ask,
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: how does the mega millionaire mind work? Does this sort
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: of prepping, a doggy park and climbing wall make them
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: feel grounded when in real life they're not? I mean,
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: how much alcohol do you stock for the end.
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: Of the world?
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  Speaker 3: One of our owners has like 6,000 bottles of wine.
• 3:31
  Speaker 3: We've got a pool table, a couple different TV sitting groups.
• 3:34
  Speaker 3: We have a gel-burning fireplace.
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: So you can see just outside here, over the fireplace,
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: the front door, the gate, right?
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, but we have a control. We can look at
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: any of the cameras. Okay, sure.
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: How do you defend something like this?
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  Speaker 3: This place could be fully functional after sustaining an exposure
• 3:53
  Speaker 3: to a 2,000-mile-an-hour shockwave. What is a small arms fire
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  Speaker 3: going to do shooting at a facility like that?
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: But what if.
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: You have 20 guys who just want to keep pouring
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: diesel fuel down the ventilation pipes and setting fire to it,
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  Speaker 1: or just being an irritant long enough to make your
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: life hard.
• 4:11
  Speaker 3: Sure, and that's why we have a couple things. A,
• 4:14
  Speaker 3: we have a sniper post on top of this building.
• 4:18
  Speaker 3: And we also have some lethal and non-lethal ways to
• 4:23
  Speaker 3: reach out and touch someone.
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: This may be a very non-American question to ask, but
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: of all the things to have in a survival bunker...
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: Why is one a shooting range?
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  Speaker 3: If there's a need to train people on how to
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  Speaker 3: defend it, there's a lot of people that put this
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  Speaker 3: very high in their priority list. Oh, wow.
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: Come on in here.
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  Speaker 3: How many nuclear bunkers have resort-style pools in them? So,
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  Speaker 3: do you want to see the waterfall on?
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: Sure.
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  Speaker 3: Dave, you turn the waterfall on. So this is a
• 5:02
  Speaker 3: saltwater computer-controlled pool. The air is kept at about 80
• 5:07
  Speaker 3: degrees in here, and the water temperature is kept at
• 5:10
  Speaker 3: plus or minus 2 degrees of the air temperature.
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  Speaker 1: There's got to be a part of you, when the
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: waterfall goes on on the indoor nuclear-hardened swimming pool at
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: the end of times, thinks this is a little bit absurd.
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: You know what's different about this place?
• 5:25
  Speaker 3: We hire a psychologist very early on in our design phase.
• 5:30
  Speaker 3: Every light in here is 3,000 degrees Kelvin or higher,
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  Speaker 3: because if you don't do that, it makes people feel depressed.
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  Speaker 1: Food is dizzying. A vault freezer, endless racks, bread baking,
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  Speaker 1: coffee hangouts, and their own farm underground.
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: So a bunch of new little lettuce things coming up here.
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  Speaker 3: So if you had one head of lettuce outside, you'd
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  Speaker 3: have 80 in the same space in here.
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: We've grown it all in here. These are the grow lights.
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: You can't stay in it too long because you have a.
• 6:09
  Speaker 3: Headache. This is looking back at the main door. And
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  Speaker 3: then I can see the inside of the guard shack
• 6:16
  Speaker 3: out there. and down the driveway. And then of course
• 6:19
  Speaker 3: we're just in hydroponics and we can see up here,
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  Speaker 3: Dave's right there at the kitchen working.
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: He's making his lunch.
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  Speaker 3: It's like being in a submarine in a thousand feet
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  Speaker 3: of water. If there's a fire or a problem internal,
• 6:31
  Speaker 3: you have to assume that opening the door to get
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  Speaker 3: out is more deadly than the condition inside. This is
• 6:37
  Speaker 3: the jail cell, right? So this is our jail. Somebody's
• 6:41
  Speaker 3: having a bad day.
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: A pretty bad day to be locked up.
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  Speaker 3: Needs an adult timeout, putting belligerent in the bar, or
• 6:48
  Speaker 3: just sleep it off. The psychologist that we dealt with
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  Speaker 3: was really interested in the number of people that we
• 6:54
  Speaker 3: were going to put in here.
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: 75 is a good number.
• 6:57
  Speaker 3: Between those is a societal structure that they call an
• 7:01
  Speaker 3: extended family. And it has wonderful productivity attributes and really
• 7:06
  Speaker 3: great levels of cooperation.
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: Things all go terribly wrong in the world, and everyone's
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: got to get here first. I'm not worried they might
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: get here and find someone else is taking it over,
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: but if there was even a chance for you to
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: kind of get it up and running.
• 7:18
  Speaker 3: No, because the people that maintain it and secure it
• 7:21
  Speaker 3: are already here.
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: So you're not worried that Dave's just going to take
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: this whole place over and bring his friends here?
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  Speaker 2: It'd be a short stay because I don't know how
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: to work anything here.
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  Speaker 3: Nothing's working now, so we're going to die in here
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  Speaker 3: if we can't get out of here.
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: Homes for up to $ 5 million, with tens of thousands
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: of annual upkeep fees. Larry's remarkable feat, visible when you
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: step out and see where he started. The next silo
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: to develop. Vast, cavernous. These were machines, places of incalculable death,
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: repurposed to give life, deserve it or not, to the
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  Speaker 1: very few.