Luxury doomsday bunkers with pools, go-kart tracks and room for horses are all the rage. Here’s how the ultra-rich are planning for the end

But the engineering and mechanical challenge of keeping all that running underground, off-grid and sealed from the outside world is, to put it mildly, considerable, as Brian Camden, a Virginia Beach engineer, told The Washington Post.

For 35 years, Camden’s Virginia Beach engineering firm has built fortified homes and shelters for private clients and the military. Among them are a nearly 15,000-square-foot haven in the Appalachian Mountains and compounds in the Rockies. His firm, Hardened Structures, currently has roughly $70 million in residential bunker projects underway,

Business, he says, is good.

Why now

In January, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists set its Doomsday Clock at 85 seconds to midnight, the closest it’s been since 1947, when the clock was established. Reasons include nuclear weapons, climate change, biological threats and artificial intelligence as contributing factors.

Even the White House is expanding its underground infrastructure, with President Trump describing a new “massive complex” being built beneath the East Wing.

Fortune reported the U.S. bomb and fallout shelter industry was expected to grow from $137 million in 2023 to $175 million by 2030, according to a BlueWeave Consulting market report.

Camden describes the dominant threat his clients are preparing for as a prolonged grid-down event.

“The grid is fragile,” he said. That’s what everybody is designing for now.”

What the ultra-rich are building

The bunker market spans an enormous price range. At the accessible end, shared survival communities like Vivos xPoint in South Dakota — built from 575 concrete bunkers at a former Army munitions depot — offer 2,200-square-foot unfinished units on 99-year leases for around $55,000, or outright purchase with land for about $75,000.

Prefabricated steel shelters from manufacturers like Atlas Survival Shelters in Texas start around $60,000, with larger models getting into the hundreds of thousands, excluding installation and freight.

And at the top of the market, custom-made reinforced-concrete bunkers typically run $800–$2,400 per square foot without furnishings — and clients aren’t asking for minimalism.

Dante Vicino of Vivos, which markets shelters to a wide range of buyers, told the Post: “Before they might’ve been okay with a minimalist utilitarian (interior), but now they’re asking for special kitchen cabinets, countertops and islands … a master bedroom with an en suite bathroom, space for crafts and hobby rooms.”

The amenities at the highest end border on satirical. SAFE, a McLean, Virginia, company, says they’ve designed shelters with spas, go-kart tracks and detention areas, the Post reports. Survival Condo, a compound in rural Kansas, features a rock-climbing wall and a 75-foot saltwater pool.