Billionaires Going All In on Bunkers and Bombproof Homes, Not Just Old Cars and Planes (2024)

64 photos

Photo: Roger Berent Architects X SAFE for THR (Composite)

We'll call them the multi-millionaire and billionaire preppers, men and women with enough money and connections to arrange for the construction of virtually indestructible and self-sufficient safe spaces on their private property. These can be anything from the now-standard panic room to an underground bunker that's nothing more than a concrete cell or something as elaborate as a second mansion with every feature you'll also find in the main one.

In recent years, the portfolio of offers has diversified proportionately with the rise of hyperawareness of impending doom. Threats vary from year to year, so shelf that zombie apocalypse joke that was probably forming in your mind as you're reading this.

The complex current geopolitical situation, increasing tensions on U.S. soil, the rise in homelessness and violent crime, the threat of another pandemic, and the proverbial end of the days by means of climate change are all situations the one-percenters would very much like to survive. And thrive, if possible, thankyouverymuch.

Al Corbi is just the man to help them do both. The name probably doesn't ring a bell, but he – and the company he founded, SAFE (Strategically Armored and Fortified Environments) – are the go-to name in the industry. He's worked with the Ministry of Defense, consulted for the White House, consulted for Hollywood movies, and put his name – and his tech – into some of the biggest, most expensive mansions of the richest people in the world.

That's a lot of superlatives right there, but they're not gratuitous. Corbi worked on Antilia, the $4.8 billion home of Indian businessman Mukesh Dhirubhai Ambani, a fortified skyscraper with everything from a 160-car garage to a snow room where you can actually go skiing. Corbi also did several of the mansions that made headlines over the years in the U.S. as "America's safest house," including the Rice House property we discussed recently.

Corbi is now featured in a piece for The Hollywood Reporter on how the billionaires are preparing for the end of the world, and his brief interview sheds some light into a super-secretive high-tech segment we wouldn't have access to otherwise. Everybody (*who is anybody) is doing it, Corbi says, and the lengths they go to to turn their homes into impenetrable, possibly lethal fortresses are only limited by their budget.

Other safety experts say that demand for bunkers started picking up as the entire world began to shutter in 2020, with the international health crisis. Normies stocked up on flour, rice, and toilet paper, and the one-percenters bought bunkers – if you're into over-simplification.

The recent rumor that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg was building a gigantic bunker under his Hawaii compound further boosted interest in this type of construction. At the same time, Corbi adds, the desire to bulletproof private property has now extended to office spaces and superyachts, the latter of which serve as a sort of backup plan, the place to go in case the impenetrable fortress is somehow, well, penetrated.

Surviving a power grid failure is at the top of the list of demands, the expert shares. Ironically, this means that, while they seek refuge in their self-sufficient bombproof mansions and bunkers, they have to rely on older automobiles and airplanes. You can never go wrong with a classic, to paraphrase an old saying, but in this case, survival depends on a classic that's not tech-packed.

“A lot of these guys are buying up King Air or older planes that don’t have the electronic avionics, and keeping one or two older cars built before 1986 in their collection, so they’ll still function in an EMP [electromagnetic pulse]," Corbi explains. "The newness is it’s shifting from the idea of nuclear ka-boom to protection against local threats. The real threat is the power grid, [and in] situations like this, sustaining your life is as important as food and water.”

You can hide in your fortress all you want, but you also have to be prepared if you want to go out, right? And if you do go out to your superyacht, count on it being equipped the same way, with subs and helicopters to get you moving about.

Corbi and SAFE are now working on a U.S. mansion with a 2025 completion date and the kind of features that would make even a James Bond movie look like amateur hour. It's surrounded by a man-made deep lake "skimmed with a lighter-than-water flammable liquid." In case of an attack, the entire lake becomes a ring of fire that protects the house.

Corbi also put in powerful water cannons that can shoot down anything from Apaches helicopters to paratroopers, a fake mountain that offers the only way into the property, with a steel wall that "could stop a 16-wheeler going 80 miles [129 kph] an hour." Before they even get to the wall, the intruders would be stopped by flame throwers and gas systems.

SAFE also offers full-on medical rooms with the kind of equipment and medication you'd find in a proper hospital and a team of doctors on call. Decontamination booths and rooms adapted to meet the owner's pre-existing conditions can be included, so whatever the prepper imagines will happen and, most importantly, how much money he or she is willing to spend, it can be done.

Meanwhile, we'll be making sourdough bread.