5 Places To Help You Go All Cockroach On The Apocalypse
If you believe the apocalypse is imminent, there are really two possible reactions:
"What can you do? Might as well get stoned and find a nice spot to watch it happen."
And,
"I SHALL BE THE VERY LAST HUMAN ALIVE ON THIS EARTH, DAMN IT! AFTER CIVILIZATION FALLS, I SHALL RISE UP AS KING OF THE ASHES!"
If you're in that second category, the good news is that lots of dedicated builders have prepared some pretty fancy spots where you can ride out the end of the world in style. Like ...
Ark Two (It's Not A Boat)
Though he already lived smack dab in the frozen waste that is greater Canada, Bruce Beach still didn't feel safely removed from the inevitable nuclear Armageddon that will end life as we know it. So, in 1980, he set out to build an underground shelter in which a lucky several humans could survive, thrive and -- eventually -- repopulate.
Starting such a project from scratch would be imposing to say the least, so he decided to repurpose some items -- specifically, 42 school buses. He stuffed them in a big-ass hole, and buried them sumbitches in concrete.
He outsourced planning to the Joker and Bane.
Concrete dry, ginormous generators installed, and air filtration systems constructed of goddamned garbage bags at the ready --
Not a joke.
-- Bruce looked at what he had created and deemed it ... a perpetual work in progress. He named it Ark Two, and yes, Bruce looks exactly how you're picturing him:
One part Noah, two parts Santa.
So what will your post-apocalyptic life in Ark Two be like? Well, you'll awaken from your long nuclear winter's nap in your sleeping quarters, which are much like ... a bus.
And not a single window to release the everlasting fart stank.
Then it's time to wash up in the bathroom, which is ... also a bus.
We just had a nightmarish flashback to the time we couldn't hold it through the bus ride in third grade.
The kitchen? Yep, it's a bus.
Buses are the safest structure. That's why they need no seatbelts.
If your nights aren't already sleepless enough due to the fact that there's an endless bombardment of nuclear fallout approximately 12 feet overhead, you can always pay a visit to the "dental room," which is ... also a bus, but one decorated by Eli Roth.
Even 12 feet of solid concrete can't contain the screams.
At this point, it's understandable if you'd like to go a bit more, shall we say, "upscale" in your post-apocalypse accommodations. Perhaps you would prefer ...
The Finest In Post-Apocalyptic Luxury
Larry Hall is an engineer, a real estate developer, and a goddamned visionary. While others looked at a decommissioned Cold War missile silo in Bumfuck, Kansas and saw a few hundred vertical feet of wasted earth, Hall saw the future site of a fallout vault. And we literally mean a Fallout vault, because Hall transformed that silo into a veritable self-contained society.
We're not stepping foot in there without Grognak's Axe.
The so-called Luxury Survival Condos feature a 10-year supply of freeze-dried food, a garden and fish farm to keep the inhabitants fed once that runs out, and common areas including "a pool, a rock climbing wall, a dog park, a schoolroom, a movie theater, a spa, and a gym." A bizarro penthouse unit (meaning it's at the bottom rather than the top) will set you back a cool $4.5 million.
We sincerely hope that price includes an elevator.
Each unit comes complete with sparkling new appliances, TVs programmed to simulate a view of the (presumably pre-kaboom) outside world, private internet access (while the internet is a thing, that is), and, naturally, access to a massive cache of weapons to fend off your irradiated former friends and family.
"And this button on your remote launches the leftover Cold War missile that we totally didn't find ..."
Other options on the upper end of the survival scale come courtesy of Vivos, whose family of repurposed properties for the prodigiously paranoid includes the sprawling xPoint complex, a series of 575 subterranean shelters scattered across 9,000 acres of undisputed South Dakotan wilderness.
That sound you hear isn't thunder; it's herds of mutant buffalo.
A spot there can be yours for the low, low price of $25,000 ... plus a ground lease payment of $1,000 per year for 99 years. Never let it be said that Vivos isn't optimistic in at least one regard.
For something just as luxuriant but a bit less ethereal, spots at the fully complete Vivos Indiana are going for $35,000 per head. Sequestered within your 4-star private bunker's lavishly appointed lounge room, you and up to 80 distinguished associates can watch the disintegration of civilization in glorious 4K.
The boils have never looked so boil-y.
For those who prefer their survival packaged in a more tube-like fashion (we're looking at you, Bruce Beach), Vivos can deliver their snazzy Quantum shelters to a location of your choosing. Should you find the need to sprawl, multiple units can even be arranged in a hub-and-spoke fashion, like some kind of prepper shuriken.
Ninjas not included.
Country living not your cup o' tea? Don't fret, we've got just the place for you ...
3970 Spencer Street In Las Vegas Has A Big (Underground) Secret
Due east of Sin City's famous Strip lies 3970 Spencer Street, an unassuming two-bedroom house that looks much like any other home in downtown Vegas. It's remarkably unremarkable.
In Vegas, no neon lights = invisible.
That's by design. The house is a later addition to a larger structure originally constructed by 1970s businessman Girard "Jerry" B. Henderson, and it's just a ruse to distract from the real feature of the property: one hell of a basement. Twenty-six feet beneath downtown Vegas lie a two-bedroom house and a one-bedroom guest house, both surrounded by an unnaturally green lawn and some very not-alive trees. An adaptive lighting system replicates a full 24-hour cycle, with shining stars emerging at night.
Still more real than pretty much anything else in Vegas.
Henderson planned to wait out the inevitable attack from the Russkies here, and he had no intention of being bored while doing so: In addition to the houses, the bunker includes "a four-hole putting green, a swimming pool, two jacuzzis, a sauna, a dance floor with a small stage, a bar, a barbecue, and huge murals of rural, tranquil settings." Surely those won't become soul-crushingly depressing after about the third year of not seeing actual sunlight.
As you tour this vast underground lair, you'll truly feel as if you've been gently enveloped by Las Vegas's bowels, thanks to eclectic decor such as wallpaper that looks as if it was ripped straight off of Elton John's back --
Your retinas burned out long before your legend ever did.
-- and a full-sized Barbie Dreamhouse kitchen with pop-out appliances:
Let's hope there wasn't a "Barbie doll" to go along with it.
Still not quite "city" enough for you? Well, there's always ...
The Outdated Fortress In The Middle Of Manhattan
Towering above lower Manhattan like the antithesis of Avengers Tower, the former AT&T Long Lines Building at 33 Thomas Street is a 550-foot, solid concrete slab of "fuck you."
"... and the taxi you rode in on."
Designed by architect John Carl Warnecke, this metropolitan monolith is a fascist-approved brutalist masterpiece, because sometimes ugly happens on purpose. In the days when phones didn't fit in pockets and "long distance" was an ingrained part of the national lexicon (ask your parents), the windowless building housed the switching equipment that enabled scads of Americans to not call their mothers often enough.
Not only did its featureless facade protect the delicate equipment inside from the destructive heat of the sun, but it was designed to withstand a full-on, Big Apple-splattering nuclear strike. The original plans included "enough food, water and generator fuel to sustain 1,500 people for two weeks during a catastrophic loss of power to the city."
Alternatively, it could sustain one you for approximately eternity.
More recently, the building has been speculated to house a massive NSA surveillance operation sinisterly known as TITANPOINTE. So should you plan to make this your post-Armageddon abode, not only will you have to take on hordes of mutated Manhattanites, you'll have to go head-to-head with The Man as well. Still, it might be worth it for its proximity to the shattered remains of Broadway.
Of course, being holed up in a giant concrete rectangle shares a glaring commonality with all of the other options we've presented so far: it's brain-meltingly lonely. If eking out a living amongst a limited group of survivors doesn't sound like your idea of a scorched-earth paradise, then you might instead consider ...
The Entirety Of Switzerland
Switzerland, as we've pointed out before, is sort of insane. Not only is every adult male issued an assault rifle by the government (and trained how to use it), but the entire country is rigged to explode -- you know, should the need arise. Good thing the entire country is also effectively one giant bomb shelter.
And some can bomb back.
In case of nuclear death raining down to melt men like so much scrumptious chocolate, every single citizen of Switzerland is promised protection in a bunker -- because having ready access to a bunker is the law. There are around 300,000 of them in private dwellings, presumably each featuring a shelf on which to prominently display their government-issued rifle. When building a home, families must either factor in the cost of a bunker or pay into a community one, and in the case of renters, landlords are required to provide bunkers capable of housing all their tenants. To cover any stragglers, there are over 5,000 government shelters open to the public.
You simply can't take a stroll through the Swiss countryside or a yodel through the Swiss Alps without stumbling upon something that looks like the entrance to a goddamned superhero's lair.
That, or you've just unwittingly discovered a top-secret cheese cache.
Of course, this level of security don't come cheap: On average, the Swiss -- citizens of a country that has been vocally neutral in every single war for the past two centuries -- spend more than 20 percent of their budget on defense. The result is prepper-level protection for nearly nine million individuals ... in a country with a population of slightly over eight million.
That means if you sign up for a Swiss pen pal and get started on some serious ass-kissing right now, there's a solid chance you could secure yourself one of those extra million spots. Just aim for a well-off citizen with his or her own private bunker, as post-apocalyptic public housing will likely be just as depressing as pre-apocalyptic public housing.
Seriously, not a single flat screen in sight.
Think Nana and Pop-Pop's loving 60-year monogamous relationship is quaint and old-fashioned? First off, sorry for that disturbing image, but we've got some news for you: the monogamous sexual relationship is actually brand new relative to how long humans have been around. Secondly, it's about to get worse from here: monkey sex.
On this month's live podcast, Jack O'Brien and the Cracked staff welcome Dr. Christopher Ryan, podcaster and author of 'Sex at Dawn', onto the show for a lively Valentine's Day discussion about love, sex, why our genitals are where they are, and why we're more like chimps and bonobos than you think.
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