From luxury bunkers to billionaire boltholes, the world’s richest are planning for collapse rather than preventing it. Julian Cribb argues this fear reveals a deeper failure of our economic system – and a stark choice for humanity’s future.

Welcome to BunkerWorld, the new planetary order of the terrified rich.

As a seven-year-old, I snapped this shot of Hitler’s ruined bunker with my old Kodak Box Brownie. My father who, as an RAF Pathfinder, had devoted much of his young manhood to reducing Hitler’s dreams to rubble (including bombing his home at Berchtesgaden), took me into East Berlin (the ‘Soviet Sector’) to see what became of tyrants. It was an instructive trip.

Now, as I gaze about me from the tower of my 75 years, I see that bunkermania is alive and kicking, worldwide, as the world’s super wealthy tremble at the cataclysm they foresee all too clearly, lying ahead for all of us. The collapse of modern civilisation.

Bunkers are hardly a novel idea. Farmers began fortifying their homesteads at least 5000 years ago, when the Bronze Age afforded them good reason. And the world is littered with the decayed grandeur of a hundred thousand ancient fortresses, castles that could sometimes withstand armies – but not the siege of time or the march of history.

Yet the spirit that animated that age-old spate of fort-building – a potent amalgam of greed and fear – is alive and thriving in the new world dis-order that is emerging today.

In their polished arrogance and self-confidence, today’s billionaires and corporate oligarchs exhibit the entitlement of the born-to-rule. Inside, however, they are quaking. Viewing the world – as they tend to – through a narcissistic prism, they assume the rest of society is motivated by the same ugly impulses as themselves – greed, envy, pride, selfishness, aggression. And they are petrified that some may want to plunder their wealth or status, just as they plundered others'.

So being very rich also means being very scared. It is a psychotic couplet. It is the cornerstone of BunkerWorld. Interviews with the super-rich reveal them to have three primary fears: health failure, family conflict and loss of wealth. The explosion in opulent fortification seeks to defy all three.

The Oppidum is a luxurious doomsday bunker in the Czech Republic mountains. Sprawling over 323,000 sq ft, it has seven apartments, a golf course, helipad, a spa, swimming pool, underground garden, cinema, library, billiards room, conference and communication rooms, gym, a bar and wine cellar, hospital with dental surgery besides the necessary water, air, power and food. It features blast doors, layered defences and automated weapon systems.

Carved into a mountain in Rothenstein, Germany, Vivos Europa One covers 76 acres above and below ground. A repurposed Soviet nuclear bunker, it has 34 private suites each of 2,500 sq ft. These include kitchens, bedrooms, deluxe bathrooms, living and dining areas, swimming pool, theatre, gym, bar and wine cellar. Vivos is built to withstand nuclear, biological, and chemical threats to protect its privileged occupants.

The builder, Vivos, claims to have created 575 private bunkers in the US plus more in Germany and Asia. These “are engineered to withstand or mitigate just about everything from a pole shift, to super volcano eruptions, solar flares, earthquakes, tsunamis, pandemics, asteroid strikes, and manmade threats including nuclear explosions, a reactor meltdown, biological or chemical disasters, terrorism and even widespread anarchy,” it asserts.

The Survival Condo in Kansas, USA, is an underground bunker that was built from a repurposed Cold War missile silo. It has 15 stories accommodating penthouses, an indoor dog walk, a shooting range, a rock-climbing wall, a swimming beach, a water park, a library, a theatre, a bar, a fitness centre, a first aid facility and a command centre. It is built to withstand a nuclear strike of more than two megatons.

Construction company SAFE (Strategically Armoured and Fortified Environments) is said to be completing a US$300 million luxury bunker, ‘Aerie’, where 625 elite members will pay $20 million each and up. Features include robot medical suites, AI wellness programs, a lavish swimming pool and fine dining – all designed to extend the life sentences of the inmates.

The island state of New Zealand has lately acquired notoriety as the ‘billionaire’s bolthole’ due to an alleged spate of bunker building by mainly foreign magnates attracted by easy investment and citizenship rules – but presumably unaware of the country’s cannibal history. Hawaii, likewise, is a magnet for the quailing plutocracy.

There are two devilish ironies to the terror of the rich. First, the fact that some of the very people who pioneered AI also fear it could replace humans or even end civilisation. Next, many of those who grew fat on fossil fuels knew, as far back as the 1970s, of the risks of climate catastrophe. So, the super-rich have long known they are digging their own graves with golden shovels. Today, they excavate bunkers, a superior sepulchre, to try to evade the consequences.

The second irony is that many tech bros, in particular, loathe government – and will undermine or destroy it where and when they can. This appeared in plain sight with the Trump regime’s plan to sabotage US governance. Also in the global effort to spread misinformation and lies using AI and social media, in order to disable democracy in general. So the bunkers are also being dug against the day when most of the world’s states fail, and anarchy rules.

If you are curious about what BunkerWorld might look like, ask the Chinese. For 4000 years their history has been punctuated by periods of violence, anarchy and rapacious warlordism, following the collapse of successive ruling dynasties from the legendary Xia and to the Shang, Zhou, Qin, Han, Tang, Yuan, Ming and Qing. Throughout these turbulent periods fortification was common, and not just by warlords.

BunkerWorld is the new world dis-order. Its outward face will probably be a ghastly mêlée of famine, mass migration, warfare, climate shocks, acute scarcity of water and soil, toxic pollution, technocracy, eco-collapse, extinction and pandemics. As governance decays and nation states fall into ruin, the ability of humanity to respond effectively and co-operatively to these threats will diminish.

Such is the array of megathreats confronting modern humanity, no-one can predict with certainty how or when collapse will occur. Only that overpowering evidence suggests it will. The rich, from their varied perspectives, can read the signs – and are digging in preparation. They may hold out in their burrows for a time, but time will ensure it is not for long.

Just as a tumour is a symptom of the cancerous process at work, BunkerWorld a symptom of the economic machine that is devouring Planet Earth and a safe future for humanity and all our grandchildren. It is this economic device which has spawned the super-rich and the universal vitiation of atmosphere, land, freshwater, oceans and life. These impacts have been magnified by the explosion in human numbers since the mid-C20th.

It is irrational to expect the same economic machinery which ruins the habitability of the Earth to be the one to repair it. It is purpose-built for exploitation, greed and inequity.

One solution is to redesign the present world economy so that it integrates new wellbeing and equity metrics into economic planning, attributes real value to nature and the Earth system that keeps us alive, and has economic policies which accelerate action to counter each of the ten megathreats.

However, one essential task is to create a world currency that is beyond the grasp of wealthy speculators, money marketeers and national banks (who all manipulate currencies for their own ends). This is the Earth Standard Currency, and it is based on the real life-giving assets of the planet – not on greed and manipulation by the rich and powerful. This will place a trustworthy, stable currency in the hands of all Earth citizens, not just the mega-rich.

In truth, the only way to end the headlong charge into BunkerWorld is to make the Earth a safer place for all future generations. This will entail abating the fear of collapse which currently powers it. And the only way to do that is to abate the mega-threats themselves. All of them.

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.

Please support Pearls and Irritations with your tax deductible donation

This year, Pearls and Irritations has again proven that independent media has never been more essential.

The integrity of our media matters - please support Pearls and Irritations

For the next month you can make a tax deductible donation through the Australian Cultural Fund

Please click here to add your donation.