In “How Much Bunker Could Tom Cruise Get for $10 Million?,” Joel Johnson of Boing Boing [singlepic=120,320,240,,left] Interviews, Leonard Henriksen, maker of high-end shelters:
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.
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Henriksen, using (reasonably) different trade names, makes “true military gradeNBC filtration equipment for your safe room, bomb shelter, or vehicle.” And it certainly appears that he’s done his engineering, compliance, and legal homework (free legal advice: you’re not allowed to order these and ship them abroad without permission from the federal government. But you may send one to your sweetie – as long as he/she lives within the Unites States. I’d say also protectorates – but then I’d be guessing).
American Safe Room Websites:
AmericanSafeRoom.com