Operating theatres, bowling alleys and home cinemas: Not happy with safe rooms, the super-rich are building luxury fortresses

Increasingly, the ultra wealthy are interested in features such as escape tunnels and medical rooms as seen on these renderings. (Courtesy SAFE via CNN Newsource)

Few things appear to soothe the existential anxieties of the super-rich like a bunker designed to withstand anything short of total nuclear Armageddon. Yet it’s no longer enough for the security-conscious billionaire to stick an impenetrable safe room in the basement where it might sit empty forever. In today’s uber-prime properties, bunkers have gone seriously upmarket and hi-tech, in some cases growing to the extent that whole homes are becoming 21st century fortresses.

“We’ve seen a lot more of a focus on entertainment,” said Al Corbi, who has been at the forefront of secure luxury for 50 years as the president and founder of SAFE (Strategically Armored & Fortified Environments), based in Virginia, in the US. “If you’re going to be able to survive underground, we want you to be having fun.”

Corbi, who helped secure a 27-floor private home in Mumbai for the billionaire industrialist Mukesh Ambani (whose son Anant recently made headlines with his lavish wedding celebrations), is currently working on a sprawling house on a 200-acre wooded plot, at an undisclosed location in the US (he is understandably tight-lipped about many aspects of his work).

The house itself, Corbi said in an interview via Zoom, is ultra-secure with the blast-proof doors, unbreakable windows and biometric door-entry systems. Then there’s the 30-foot-deep moat with a swing bridge, the water canons capable of taking out helicopters, drones or skydivers, and the film of flammable liquid that can be automatically deployed across the surface of the artificial lake and ignited to create a defensive ring of fire.

“Look at medieval times, a moat is one of the greatest deterrents,” said Corbi. “But they didn’t have jet skis back then.” Corbi’s client, a business mogul and avid watersports fan, saw a dual use for his moat and plans to use it as a race track for his alpha pals, too.

The very wealthy have always been targets, whether from intruders, kidnappers, or assassins. Now fears have grown to include “eat the rich” anti-capitalist activists, extreme weather caused by climate change, terrorists, unforeseen apocalyptic events — and a perennial pandemic threat that was made all too real in 2020.

'Like the Ritz-Carlton, underground'

Corbi, who has also built underground escape tunnels that double as go-kart tracks, said there is no appetite among his clients for utilitarian design in safe spaces. Even 50 years ago, he says traditional bunkers looked like high-end hotels — “kind of like the Ritz Carlton, underground”. But now his richest clients would scoff at such modesty.

A spirit of one upmanship may partly be driving demand. Several specialists have reported a bump in inquiries since reports surfaced last year of a huge compound that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is building in Hawaii, which, public planning documents revealed, includes a 5,000 sq ft underground shelter with living space, a plant and mechanical room  to keep the bunker operational, and an escape hatch. Bill Gates reportedly has bunkers under all of his many homes.

Graham Harris, a founding partner at SHH Architecture and Interior Design in London, one of the world’s leading high net worth design studios, said he, too, is responding to shifting demands. Not long ago, clients tended to build the bathrooms of their primary suites to withstand attacks. Interior walls would be made of concrete, and secure doors were designed to blend with the home’s decor. Better to be able to pop next door at night than try to race down to a far-off basement.

“Now they’ve really grown in size and stature,” said Harris, who often now secures the whole suite rather than just the bathroom, allowing clients to cocoon themselves with the flick of a bedside switch. “We also did a house in Highgate (an upmarket area of north London) where the cinema was actually the safe room with its own separate filtered air supply, secure doors, a kitchenette and a fully stocked area that could sustain a family for over a week.”

Another client turned his 3,000 sq ft art gallery into a safe room, which also had a separate power supply. To help keep such spaces comfortable, smart “skylights” can be installed in the ceiling to mimic the time and outside weather, bathing subterranean interiors in constantly changing “natural” light.

Shark tanks, shooting ranges and simulators

Secret doors and passageways have become as much a desirable novelty to show off to guests after dinner as a vital safety feature. Creative Home Engineering in Arizona — a company who specialize in creating and installing them for clients around the globe — recently built a giant working rotating fireplace that swivels to reveal the underground entrance to a shooting range. In another house, an old British phone booth has been engineered so that when the right code is entered on the keypad, the glass windows turn opaque, and the back wall opens to reveal a slide leading to a secure basement complex that includes a flight simulator and a shark tank.

Corbi said billionaires have always been wise to danger, but he has now noticed far more inquiries from millionaires who might traditionally have been content with standard security measures. For this market, existing rooms can be secured for a few thousand dollars. For hundreds of thousands, prefabricated modular steel bunkers can be dropped into the ground under a new-build house.

For all but the most secure systems, Corbi explained his clients are simply buying time: “If someone breaks in at night, they’re still going to get in, but they’re not going to be able to get into the bedroom, where the family is safe plenty long enough for the police to finish their coffee and donuts.”

At the richer end of the spectrum, billionaires are increasingly paranoid about threats to their health, whether from bioterror attacks, viral pandemics or old-fashioned heart failures and accidents. Covid gave a big boost to this part of SAFE’s business, which Corbi’s wife Naomi, a registered nurse, now heads up.

Some of the rooms she has overseen the creation of are as well-equipped as operating theatres at the best hospitals, with decontamination chambers, wardrobes of personal protective equipment and pharmacies stocked with emergency medicines as well as vitamin compounds tailored to residents to help them withstand long periods in isolation.

“Forget nuclear bombs, the thing we should be prepping for is real life,” Corbi said. “If I had a dollar to spend on a bunker or on medical preparedness, I know what I’d do. The days when you can throw a first aid kit in a prefab bunker and say you’re safe are long gone.”