AN ex-government contractor-turned-doomsday prepper is selling homes for the end of the world after converting old missile silos into inverted skyscrapers where the rich and famous can ride out the apocalypse.

Larry Hall, 64, started developing his first "Survival Condo" in central Kansas in 2010, but following a spike in interest amid the pandemic, he now has several more in development in the US, Europe, and Asia.

Hall told The Sun how the idea was initially born in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. At the time, he was an entrepreneur with an internet business, and also had experience designing and constructing computer data centers.

He first thought about buying and converting Cold War-era missile silos into nuclear-hardened data centers for the world's biggest companies, but the idea proved not to be viable so he "decided to protect people instead."

Hall purchased his first silo, an Atlas F. Intercontinental Ballistic Missile Silo, for $300,000 in 2008.

He spent the next several years – and upwards of $20 million – converting the site into a state-of-the-art 201-feet deep, 15-story, completely self-sufficient underground metropolis capable of sheltering up to 75 people for at least five years.

"The goal is to protect residents from a whole wide range of potentially world-ending threats from a nuclear war, to a pandemic, meteor strike, and civil unrest," Hall explained to The Sun.

"These are luxury, nuclear-hardened bunkers that are engineered to protect any resident both physically and mentally too."

NUCLEAR RESISTANT BUNKER

The silo itself is designed to withstand a 20 kiloton nuclear warhead detonated within half a mile.

As part of his restoration project, Hall installed special flexible, nine-feet thick concrete walls that can bend several inches without breaking under the strain of a 2000-mile-an-hour shockwave in the event of a thermonuclear attack.

"The resilience of the Survival Condo is so impressive," Hall said, "but on top of that we have all the high-tech stuff like the life support systems.

"We've got five different power systems. We've got a wind turbine that can power the whole facility. We have two diesel generators, each of which can power the whole facility. We're connected to the grid and we have a battery backup system. We also have enough diesel stored to run on that alone for two and a half years."

Equally as impressive are the facility's living quarters and amenities.

The original Survival Condo contains 14 separate living quarters – ranging from 900 square-foot hotel room-style suites priced at $500,000, up to multi-level 3,600 square-foot penthouses for $4.5 million – all of which have since been snapped up.

Each unit comes equipped with a modern kitchen and bathroom as well as "virtual windows" -a wall screen projection that provides a video-relayed view of the outside world.

Prices can also go higher for prospective residents who wish to customize their quarters.

For example, one Saudi customer chose to install an underground mosque as well as a concealed subterranean helicopter hanger linked by a tunnel to their unit, Hall said.

TRANQUILITY BENEATH GROUND

Outside of their luxe living quarters, inhabitants of the bunker are also not in short supply in the way of things to do in terms of recreation.

Spread out across the silos 15 floors is a 75-meter swimming pool, full luxury spa and sauna, a movie theater, lounge, exercise facility, rock climbing wall, golf range, indoor shooting range, and even a dog park.

There is also a fully-equipped classroom, a large Whole Foods-inspired supermarket, a medical center, and an aquaponics lab where vault dwellers can grow their own fruits and vegetables.

According to Hall, the silo is already stockpiled with enough food and water to last for more than five years. Survival Condo is also home to a reverse osmosis machine that is capable of producing up to 10,000 gallons of fresh water each day.

"If residents want to bring their own food they can too," Hall said. "There are walk-in freezers where they can store their own goods. So, for instance, if we're going to be locked down for seven years, then can bring with them seven turkeys to save for Thanksgiving.

"It's just a question of what you want. It's very flexible."

Each element of the silo's design was constructed under the guidance of a top psychologist, with the aim of ensuring that the underground community would function well in times of external tumult and chaos.

Explaining the importance of maintaining residents' psychological welfare, Hall explained: "It’s essential, we hired a psychologist that worked on the biosphere projects with Arizona State University and she's a consultant for NASA and the European Space Agency for that matter.

"She was employed to tell us what we needed to do, because if you have idle time on your hands but you don't have enough activities to keep occupied you start to build up different levels of depression.

"Some people call it cabin fever, but it's essentially where you just shut down and stop functioning properly."

To avoid a societal capitulation inside the silo, Hall said socialization between occupants would be encouraged, and kids would still attend school during any prolonged lockdown.

He would also ask – but not force – residents to work a minimum of four hours a day, taking up a variety of different jobs from helping to grow food, working security, or helping with maintenance tasks to keep up morale.

Volunteers would periodically rotate jobs to ensure "nobody feels like they got the short end of the stick and kind of lost out on a job or was given a task inferior to another.

"All this would help to avoid a single point of failure," Hall explained.

PANDEMIC FUELS SALES

When Hall first began developing the Survival Condo more than a decade ago, he said some critics "poo-pooed" his vision, discrediting him as a crackpot for undertaking such a task to begin with.

Sales and uptake on the units were initially slow too, with very few seemingly willing to shell out millions on a backup plan without a visible or concrete impending threat to life as we know it.

But in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, and as freak weather events occur more frequently and political tensions heat up across the globe, Hall said attitudes towards himself and Survival Condo have shifted dramatically in recent months.

"We've been experiencing a real surge in business of late," he said.

"Every time there's a big major disaster, whether it be the Fukushima earthquake that wrecked Japan's nuclear reactors, or China and Russia rattling over the Ukraine border – we see a surge [in interest].

"The whole Covid-19 pandemic was a real cornerstone too" he added. "That was a real eye-opener for people. Now millions have died from the virus and we've all seen how quickly the world can change."

Some who were once critics have now credited Hall, he said, for foreseeing the chaos of the last 18 months.

"A lot have people have realized, 'Oh my gosh, you've thought of everything,' because people were having to spend all this time in isolation at home, without anything to do and without their kids in school.

"But here they could've swum in an indoor pool, rock climbed, gone to the gym, play air hockey, children could play with other kids – they could go to school and learn in an actual classroom.

"There was definitely a different tune after COVID," Hall continued. "The set of questions I get asked is taking a much more reasonable turn towards the civil, I'd say."

The shift in attitude has led to a direct upturn in business too, he said.

The increased demand prompted him to begin building another silo in the US, which is currently under construction.

While the original Survival Condo is around 54,000 square feet, the new one will be almost three times the size at 150,000 square feet. Around half of its rooms have already been sold.

A number of other bunkers are also in the early stages of planning. Some of them will be over half a million square feet in size, Hall claims.

For anyone wanting a bunker of their own, prices start at $40 million.

Currently, none of the occupants of the original Survival Condo live at the base full time, but various residents and their families have spent several weeks or even upwards of a month at the site during the pandemic.

Everyone who came told Hall they were "so glad they had a Survival condo to retreat back to", he said.

Describing what life is like inside the silo, Hall called it a "pleasant surprise."

"The first comment we get from people that spend their first night here is like, 'did you guys drug me? What happened?' because they ended up having the best night's sleep of their lives.

"Because we have the EMP shielding, radio waves and other things can't come through the silo. Everything we do will cell phone signal, wifi, and other things like that are generated inside – but outside forces don't come in here and that affects your ability to sleep for some reason.

"My wife and son always say they can't wait for the summer because they come up to stay here and say they can finally get some silence.

"They call it 'silo sleep.' They just think it's the coolest," Hall said.

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