Doomsday Shelters
Selling fear:
The Vivos network, which offers partial ownerships similar to a timeshare in underground shelter communities, is one of several ventures touting escape from a surface-level calamity.
Radius Engineering in Terrell, Texas, has built underground shelters for more than three decades, and business has never been better, says Walton McCarthy, company president.
The company sells fiberglass shelters that can accommodate 10 to 2,000 adults to live underground for one to five years with power, food, water and filtered air, McCarthy says.
The shelters range from $400,000 to a $41 million facility Radius built and installed underground that is suitable for 750 people, McCarthy says. He declined to disclose the client or location of the shelter.
“We’ve doubled sales every year for five years,” he says.Other shelter manufacturers include Hardened Structures of Colorado and Utah Shelter Systems, which also report increased sales.
[…]
The Vivos website features a clock counting down to Dec. 21, 2012, the date when the ancient Mayan “Long Count” calendar marks the end of a 5,126-year era, at which time some people expect an unknown apocalypse.
Vicino, whose terravivos.com website lists 11 global catastrophes ranging from nuclear war to solar flares to comets, bristles at the notion he’s profiting from people’s fears.
“You don’t think of the person who sells you a fire extinguisher as taking advantage of your fear,” he says. “The fact that you may never use that fire extinguisher doesn’t make it a waste or bad.
“We’re not creating the fear; the fear is already out there. We’re creating a solution.
Yip Harburg commented on the subject about half a century ago, and the Chad Mitchell Trio recited it. It’s at about 0:40 on the recording, though the rest is worth listening to as well.
Hammacher Schlemmer is selling a shelter,
worthy of Kubla Khan’s Xanadu dome;
Plushy and swanky, with posh hanky panky
that affluent Yankees can really call home.Hammacher Schlemmer is selling a shelter,
a push-button palace, fluorescent repose;
Electric devices for facing a crisis
with frozen fruit ices and cinema shows.Hammacher Schlemmer is selling a shelter
all chromium kitchens and rubber-tiled dorms;
With waterproof portals to echo the chortles
of weatherproof mortals in hydrogen storms.What a great come-to-glory emporium!
To enjoy a deluxe moratorium,
Where nuclear heat can beguile the elite
in a creme-de-la-creme crematorium.
EDITED TO ADD (8/9: Slate on this as a bogus trend.
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Henning Makholm • July 30, 2010 1:00 PM
“Similar to a timeshare”? Sure, you’ll be covered iff armageddon happens to fall in the third week or May or November …