Forget that musty fallout shelter your grandfather dug in the backyard. If you want to make it through the next zombie attack, earthquake or nuclear war in style, just write a check to Vivos, a California company that’s trying to build a network of swank shelters across the country. For $50K and up, you’ll get an underground home “designed to withstand a 50 megaton blast within 10 miles, a series of force 10 earthquakes, 450 MPH surface winds, a 1,000,000 volt electromagnetic pulse (EMP), and flooding submersion for up to 500 hours.” Of course, you’ll also have to sleep in bunk beds surrounded by 200 of your closest friends, and then deal with survivor’s guilt when you resurface after a year and learn that your less fortunate neighbors have already been eaten by the alien lizard people.

As highlighted by The Guardian, Vivos plans to build 20 underground “assurance of life” centers around the U.S., where up to 40,000 people can survive whatever kills off the other 296 million people in the rest of the country.

Should you have the credentials and the cash, the rewards of a berth in a Vivos shelter seem high. Each staffed complex has a decontamination shower and a jogging machine; a refrigerated vault for human DNA and a conference room with wheely chairs. There are TVs and radios, flat-screen computers, a hospital ward, even a dentist’s surgery ready to serve those who forgot to pack a toothbrush in the hurry. “Virtually any meal” can be cooked from a stockpile of ingredients that includes “baked potato soup” but, strangely, no fish, tinned or otherwise. Framed pictures of mountain ranges should help ease the loss of a world left behind

Vivos claims to have received over 1,000 applications for its network of shelters, though it’s unclear whether the company has built anything more than a prototype near Barstow, CA and a series of slick computer-rendered images of the planned shelters. However, Vivos is apparently hoping to finish its network by 2012, just in time for the Mayan-predicted end of the world.

Bunker mentality: the ultimate underground shelter [The Guardian]

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