Mayan Calendar Inspires Boom In Doomsday Bunkers
Business is booming for businesses in the United States that design and build doomsday bunkers. The last time doomsday bunkers were so popular, the U.S. and Russia were bent on mutually assured destruction. This time around the hysteria is inspired by an accumulation of problems and the legend of the Mayan calendar. Rather than family-sized capsules buried in the backyard, the doomsday bunkers of the 21st century resemble luxury hotels complete with wine cellars and institutional kitchens.
Happy days for doomsday bunker businesses
Doomsday bunker sales have had a huge increase lately after all the financial meltdowns, hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis , Middle East wars and a nuclear disaster. The Mayan calendar is getting close to an end on December 21, 2012 which causes part of the increase in doomsday income. The Japan earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster made more people concerned and ready to buy bunkers; the Middle East uprising hasn’t helped at all either. A 70 percent increase in product sales was reported by doomsday fortress making business Northwest Shelter Systems which charges $200,000 and $20 million for a bunker. Just since the Japan earthquake, undergroundBombShelter.com has had a 400 percent increase in inquiries in its portable fallout shelters, bomb shelters and underground bunkers. The $9,500 nuclear biological chemical shelter tent is the most popular item sold.
Getting ready for disaster
There’s a Nebraska underground project going on as the biggest doomsday bunker of all. There are five 200 person doomsday bunkers that individuals can sign up for “co-ownership” of paying $25,000 each to Vivos. The week after the Japan earthquake and nuclear disaster, the reservations, which requires a $5,000 fee, went up 1,000 percent for the company. A 137,000 square foot doomsday bunker that Vivos is building in Nebraska is bigger than a Walmart. Built to withstand a 50 megaton nuclear blast, it will accommodate 950 individuals in apocalyptic luxury for up to a year. There can be four amounts of suits. Included could be a jail, pet kennels, a computer room, a wine cellar, kitchens, a medical center and even a dental center. A hardened lookout tower 350 feet high will provide a panoramic view of the ravaged landscape, and tight security will prevent radioactive mutant zombies from getting inside.
Mayan calendar causing lots of worry
Vivos promotes its doomsday bunkers with a dramatic video about the end of the world as forecast by the Mayan Calendar. There are days, hours, minutes and seconds in a countdown to December 21, 2012 on the business site. It might not actually be doomsday though. A textbook released last fall titled “Calendars and Years II: Astronomy and Time in the Ancient and Medieval World” (Oxbow Books, 2010), states that the conversion of dates from the Mayan calendar to the modern Gregorian calendar might be off by 50 to 100 years. Vivos site didn’t make it clear if the $5,000 could be refunded. Hopefully it can. youtube.com/watch?v=vDbzUoY-hRE
Citations
CNN Money
money.cnn.com/2011/03/22/real_estate/doomsday_bunkers/index.htm
ABC News
abcnews.go.com/Business/underground-bunkers-big-business/story?id=13212546&page=2
TIME
newsfeed.time.com/2011/03/25/sign-of-the-apocalypse-bunker-sales-increase-after-japan-earthquake/
Live Science
livescience.com/11053-earth-postponed.html
