Fear 2012? Bunker hustler has you covered $50K saves you from Planet X

By Rik Myslewski in San Francisco

Posted in Science, 13th April 2010 07:02 GMT


A California entrepreneur is building a series of hardened underground bunkers that he says will be able to save the lives of 4,000 well-heeled bunkernauts should something go terribly, terribly wrong with earth.

What might go wrong, you ask? The website of Vivos, the brainchild of founder Robert Vicino, provides a laundry list of worries: nuclear war, biological warfare, the return of Planet X (aka Niburu or Nemesis), ginormous solar-flare activity, a reversal of earth's magnetic poles, a global tsunami, a killer comet or asteroid*, or a super volcano that's sure to someday erupt from below Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming.

And Vicino isn't merely talking through his tinfoil hat. He recently gave a tour of his first such bunker - in an "undisclosed location" near the Mojave Desert town of Barstow, California ("Crossroads of Opportunity") - to an NBC News affiliate.

This first of Vicino's planned 20 bunkers is a 20,000 square foot facility buried five stories underground, which he says has walls two to three feet thick, room for dozens of bedrooms to accommodate 200 residents, plus a hospital and a "massive" kitchen.

Vicino wants to help the (affluent) common man. Referring to shelters such as the ones he's planning, he told NBC News: "The government has facilities - they're just don't have them for you and me." And so if you're willing to pay $50,000 for your space once Vicino's shelters are open for business, he'll put you on his waiting list - which he claims now has around 1,000 paranoid prudent prospective customers.

FROM THE REGISTER