How Much Bunker Could Tom Cruise Get for $10 Million?
While Tom Cruise may not be building a bunker under his Telluride estate—his spokespeople have denied it—it got me thinking: How much underground bunker could one get for $10 million?
Before he put his mind to designing underground survival shelters, Leonard Henrikson, a gentle Oregonian proud of his Swedish descent, built presses for radioactive waste for the government. But after 9/11, there was again a market for underground survival bunkers. "You couldn't build them fast enough," Henrikson told me.
Henrikson is quick to qualify that he wasn't pitching slapdash shelters up to make a quick buck. "I worked on our shelter design and engineering off and on for six months." He later sold some of his NBC filtration systems—that's "Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical"—to various governments.
There are two primary costs involved in building a secure bunker, explained Henrikson. "The biggest cost structurally is the roof and ceiling. You have to span from wall-to-wall for the whole shelter." (The shelter sold by Henrikson's company, American Safe Room, use steel trusses every few feet along the ceiling.)
"If you look at regular house construction it's, like, 30 pounds per square foot to account for snow load. [In a shelter] you're looking at something that is hundreds of times stronger."
Henrikson's rooms are built to withstand a 50 PSI "blast load"—the sort that might come after a nuclear attack. That's 7,200 pounds per square foot.
After you've built a shelter that can withstand an attack, you have to keep the air clean. The NBC filtration systems built by Henrikson—complete with battery backup and hand pump—can keep the air clean for up to 12 people.
American Safe Room sells their kits for around twenty-thousand dollars, plus shipping.
I asked Henrikson what sort of shelter I could get for $10 million.
"Probably a very nice one."
I wanted hard, wildly inaccurate numbers. I pressed Henrikson to take a stab.
"When people build shelters and aren't really in the shelter business, they have to go back to zero. That's where a lot of the expense is."
"You're going underground. Are you going to be under the water table? Is the thing going to tank water on you? There should be some tests before you even begin. You should have someone come in and drill bore holes to see if the ground is even suitable."
It wouldn't be cheap to dig out and install a steel-reinforced shelter under an existing house. That would add a huge amount of engineering expense; it's not hard to imagine a quality shelter under an existing structure could cost a couple million just in labor and materials.
But I still wanted a number. Henrikson was too wise to lock himself into any specific number, but he offered this clue: "We can build them any length you want."
(And he does mean just "length." It's easy to extend the shelters by adding more steel trusses, but making them wider while retaining the same 50 PSI blast load is difficult—and expensive.)
Thus: If one of American Safe Room's 21-foot shelters can be had for $20k, then $10 million would build a shelter 10,500 feet long, nearly two miles long, capable of holding 6,000 people. Not bad! If you see a two-mile trench being dug outside the Cruise compound, perhaps the rumors are true after all.
Thanks to Len Henrikson of American Safe Room/Bomb Shelter for putting up with my questions. A class act.
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Wait, so how wide are they?
yes, were back to the atomic age!
@DEVOPHILL(#1)
According to the web site (see link in article), the kit builds a "21-foot, 4-inch long by 10-foot wide" shelter.
Where does the 50 PSI figure come from?
Should've interviewed someone who actually does mega-shelters.
See: http://www.safecastle.com/photo-galleries.php
That pictured megashelter, after the finish work and luxury appointments within will be into seven figures. It is a shelter going in under new construction.
The 50 PSI number is one offered by Henrikson. I'm not sure where he got it!
JC Refuge: That SafeCastle mega-shelter is awesome! I want to live there.
I did actually call several different companies before finding Henrikson. Most of the people were serious paranoid jerks, even after I explained to them that I had a personal affection for bunkers and wasn't planning on making fun of them. It took me a while to find Len, who was smart, sane, and friendly.
Joel--I understand. Len is legit, but our industry is rife with kooks and fly-by-nighters.
Our builder at Safecastle has installed about 500 shelters around the US over the last 15 years ... around 100 for FEMA. I have one myself under my home office here.
FYI, right now, we are doing more fallout shelter business than ever--you can reach your own conclusions about why that might be. A lot of folks are shopping them and several are making the decision to get real about their little place in the changing landscape of proliferating threats.
Underground shelters are serious business and folks need to be sure they are going with someone who knows what they are doing (and not fall for the internet legend of being able to put a shipping container underground--very bad idea).
$10M for a shelter could obviously get you a state of the art subterranean fortress. One way it might be done in a way to get the most bang for the buck would be to create a "wagon-wheel" design where multiple rooms (for 10 mil, a whole lot of rooms)come off as spokes from a central area. or perhaps do a few of those wheel/spoke designs in a single complex. Mr. Cruise and family would probably want to be sure to make the space as comfortable as possible, in addition to being as secure as possible, so you might allocate at least half the project's budget for interior finish work and electronic gadgetry.
Bottom line here is that there are lots of folks out there with shelters. They make perfect sense, providing great peace of mind in the face of a wide range of natural and man-made threats. However, no one talks about their own shelter. They've all seen read the novels or watched the movie plots where the unprotected storm the bunker housing the "privileged." Mr. Cruise will not admit what he is doing on his property. Neither will anyone else out there. But it doesn't mean there isn't a movement afoot. ;-)
50psi pressure is a meaningless number without the time duration of the load. Snow load is 30psf but static (that is it is there for a long time: days or weeks). Blast loads are on the order of milliseconds. Its a slap instead of a push.
designing for 50psi static loads may be 10 mil. 50psi dynamic ain't that bad.
jimmy (i work in this sorta field)
If there was a revolution I would also bury my money.
What is sad is that the famous actor of 'Impossible Mission' would choose to spend so much money in a bunker instead of investing in education or improving our world.
US biochemical weapons have the power of destroying our only world 300 times. If he could suceed in surviving so many opportunities, who would buy his future new films?
If there was a revolution I would also bury my money.
Great, you could burn it to keep warm.
silly humans, lol