Doomsday Bunkers in Kansas Ready For Almost Anything

It seems like forever, but it was actually only a few months ago that we all became preppers overnight and many of us were willing to trade our firstborn child for a family pack of toilet paper. OK, maybe not trade one of our kids, but just about anything else.

Thank God the TP supply finally caught up with the demand, but many of us have hung onto a little bit of the prepper mentality.

Then there are the hard core preppers. The ones who drop a million dollars or more for their portion of a doomsday bunker.

One of my friends had been telling me about these things but I'd never researched them, then I stumbled onto this story on CNET talking about a former underground Atlas missile silo that had been converted into a Doomsday Bunker.

From above it doesn't look like much. Sure, the armed guard at the gate tips you off to the fact that this is more than just an unusual home in the middle of Kansas but the real story is underground.

The 54,000 square foot complex extends some 200 feet underground and is divided into 15 individual levels with 7 of those for living quarters.

In addition to thoroughly modern living quarters the complex also includes a resort quality swimming pool, a gym, a shooting range, even a cinema loaded with the latest titles.

Since most of the people who've plunked down a million dollars or more for their portion of the bunker have kids, there is also a library and school facility. When another silo goes online sometime in the future the kids in this silo will be able to Skype with their counterparts in the other silo(s).

Shortly before everything hit the fan earlier this year, Claire Reilly from CNET took a tour of one of these bunkers.

With five power sources, its own hydroponics area, and supplies for 5 years they should be ready for just about anything. By the way, they opted to go for bidet toilets rather than the standard units because the storage space for five years worth of TP for 75 people would have taken up an entire level and building out the storage space would have cost about $3 million. Decisions were made. Bidet it is.

So, who buys into one of these rehabilitated missile silos turned Doomsday Bunker? Doctors, lawyers, international businessmen, engineers, people with means and a fear of an impending apocalypse.

The original underground silo was constructed to house and launch an Atlas intercontinental ballistic missile back in the 1960s and entrepreneurs have only recently discovered productive uses for them now that the missiles are gone.

The bunkers were originally designed to be able to withstand a 10 kiloton blast within a half mile of the silo. That would mean it should be able to withstand a 2,000 mph shockwave. Of course just the ability to survive the launch of one of those giant Atlas rockets from the '60s would make this thing darned near indestructible already.

Fortunately we've not had to contend with the threat of nuclear annihilation so far this year. So far.