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For when the zombie apocalypse hits.
- Super rich Silicon Valley moguls are buying up millions of dollars' worth of doomsday bunkers and installing them in New Zealand, Bloomberg reports.
- The most expensive cost $8 million and is and buried 11 feet underground.
- This is reportedly part of a Silicon Valley sub-culture that believes it must be prepared for an apocalypse-like scenario.
Silicon Valley entrepreneurs are investing millions of dollars in apocalyptic "Plan B" scenarios, reports Bloomberg's Olivia Carville.
Most notably tech millionaires are buying up doomsday bunkers and installing them in New Zealand, which has a reputation in Silicon Valley for being the ideal end-of-the-world bolt hole. In February it emerged that Paypal cofounder Peter Thiel had built a panic room into his property in Queenstown.
Carville spoke to two suppliers of underground bunkers, including Gary Lynch of Rising S Co., who said the company has placed bunkers in New Zealand for seven Silicon Valley entrepreneurs over the past two years. The company's most expensive model costs $8 million and is buried 11 feet underground to make it impervious to a nuclear blast.
Another bunker builder named Robert Vicino is working on a bunker big enough for 300 people, at $35,000 a head.
Carville spoke to Y Combinator president Sam Altman, who said that previous statements he'd made about an escape plan to New Zealand had been a joke. "The world is so interconnected now that if anything was to happen, we would all be in pretty bad shape, unfortunately," he told Bloomberg. However he does apparently have a "go bag" stocked with a gun, antibiotics, batteries, water, blankets, a tent, and gas masks.
Super rich Silicon Valley property buys have posed a problem for New Zealand in the past, and consequently in August it passed a law banning foreigners from buying existing homes in an attempt to curb inflated housing prices.