https://www.telegraph.co.uk/luxury/...erranean-boltholes-private-ventilators-super/
At the turn of the year, as the coronavirus pandemic started to wreak havoc across the globe, nowhere was safe. Well, nearly nowhere. Some 50 owners of super yachts found themselves conveniently moored in the pristine waters of the Caribbean, self-isolating in style.
Roman Abramovich’s 533ft mega-yacht, Eclipse, and Ernesto Bertarelli’s similarly ostentatious cruiser, Vava II, were both reportedly spotted in the region. In March, the US billionaire David Geffen posted an update from aboard his 454ft superyacht, Rising Sun. ‘Isolated in the Grenadines avoiding the virus,’ the 77-year-old wrote in an Instagram post aboard the vessel which boasts a gym, cinema and wine cellar. ‘I’m hoping everybody is staying safe.’
The offending message – and subsequently Geffen’s entire Instagram account - were swiftly deleted following a social media backlash at the ‘tone-deaf’ response to the crisis as the deaths mounted up. But it served to reveal a universal truth: in good times, and in bad, the super rich do things differently.
Even before the Covid-19 pandemic swept the earth, its wealthiest citizens were devising new ways to protect themselves against future Armageddon. An entire industry has sprung up around creating bolt-holes safe from war, disease, climate emergency or whatever fresh nightmare is next heading our way. And even in the wake of global meltdown, still guaranteeing the levels of luxury to which some have grown accustomed.
In the rolling hills of central Kansas, property developer Larry Hall has been building a complex of so-called ‘survival condos’ on the site of a decommissioned Cold War nuclear bunker, originally engineered to withstand a five kilotonne nuclear warhead detonated within a half mile.
He first invested in the site following 9/11 and planned to develop an impregnable data centre for corporations to use. But noticing the increasing desire of high net worth individuals to seek ever greater protection for themselves and their families, he instead developed the survival condos.
The first batch are spread out across 54,000 square ft. Initially they all sold out after being advertised in 2012, but following the death of one investor a few are now back on the market, with the smallest available for $500,000 and the most expensive (three bed, two bath) for $3.4m.
Hall, a 63-year-old who hails from Denver, is now developing a second bunker on the site which can support up to 120 people. He intended to sell the units as individual condos but has received interest from the Middle East and a (unnamed) US company that wants to buy the whole facility outright.
The Middle East potential buyers have enquired about the possibility of adding an ‘underground James Bond-style heliport’ and a subterranean mosque connected to the main facility. The unnamed US bidders, meanwhile, are considering using it to house the company’s data – alongside luxury penthouses for their top executives.
Among the current owners of his condos, Hall includes ‘business leaders and billionaires’. Shared facilities include a climbing wall, 75ft indoor pool, cinema, games room and indoor shooting range. The bunker is also equipped with its own hydroponics and aquaculture to grow enough food to be self-sufficient, and is connected to two deep wells capable of producing 10,000 gallons of drinking water a day which can be stored in three underground 25,000 gallon storage tanks.
The complex uses ‘a set of military grade air filters’ which Hall blithely states can screen out Covid-19. "They filter every known pathogen to man," he says, "including things like nerve gas and viruses and bacteria and all that." The monthly service charge also covers state-of-the-art surveillance cameras, a passive sensor system and armed guards patrolling 24 hours a day.
"Originally when people purchased the condos their intent was to only use it in a catastrophe," says Hall. "But when they came here to do the final walkaround I got a lot of backhanded compliments that they didn’t expect them to be as nice as they were." Some owners, he says, come up here to while away long weekends or ‘get away from the hustle and bustle of their daily lives’ within the nuke-hardened concrete walls.
He estimates 80 per cent of his buyers have young children, with the condos intended as a family legacy to insulate against global collapse. "Our structural engineers estimate this facility will last 1,000 years," Hall says. "It will outlive the castles of Europe."
Society’s richest ensuring they have a bolthole to retreat to in times of emergency, is nothing new. During the Black Death, the wealthy fled London in their droves to sit out the plague in their country homes. Doctors, lawyers and merchants, all secured health certificates allowing them to leave the city. In the early summer of 1665, as cases started to rise, King Charles II and his courtiers left for Hampton Court, and then Oxford.
The onset of Covid-19 witnessed a similar exodus of second home owners from town to country, or indeed the other side of the world. The tech billionaires of Silicon Valley, whose wealth depends on predicting what is around the corner, have turbo-charged this notion of an escape route. For years they have been buying up bunkers and tracts of land as ‘apocalypse insurance’ propelled by science fiction fantasy and futurist chaos theory.
New Zealand was the favoured destination, with the US billionaire Peter Thiel, who co-founded Paypal, leading the charge buying a 477-acre former sheep station on the South Island. But in 2018 the country’s government introduced a law banning foreigners from buying most residential property. That has still not stopped the tech barons looking elsewhere.
Former Facebook product manager Antonio García Martínez (who declined to be interviewed for this article) has reportedly bought five wooded acres on an island in the Pacific Northwest and invested in generators, solar panels, and thousands of rounds of ammunition. Elon Musk continues to fantasise over the ultimate escape bolthole, declaring there is a 70 per cent chance he will flee Earth for Mars at some point in his lifetime.
The global lockdown engendered by coronavirus created a surge in interest in private jets. The number of private jet flights from Hong Kong to Australia and North America in January, for example, jumped 214 per cent compared with the previous year.
"People who would normally fly first class with their family started saying for the convenience of not being quarantined, or seeing other people, they would take private jets," says Giles Vickers-Jones, the founder and chairman of London-based private jet charter firm Shy Aviation.
Others prefer to keep helicopters fully fuelled should they require a quick escape. Even prior to the coronavirus lockdown, Vickers-Jones says, clients were bolting on extra days to their charters just in case they needed a quick exit route. Even as global shares have plunged, the demand for private jets has continued unabated.
Being able to get away, and stay away, Vickers-Jones says, has never been more vital for his wealthiest friends and clients. ‘They have turned their attention to property and land,’ he says. ‘They’re not selling, they’re buying.’
In recent months, the British luxury concierge company, Quintessentially, which has offices around the world, has seen a surge in requests from wealthy clients seeking to secure themselves a luxury bolthole to escape lockdown. Private yacht charters have also jumped.
"The virus has led to some rather unusual property requests," says Penny Mosgrove, CEO of the company’s property arm, Quintessentially Estates. "We’ve seen requests for castles with moats, homes in the middle of nowhere with plenty of grounds for isolation from the virus. One client even asked us to find a quote for an underground bunker."
Even way back in those heady months of 2019 when the notion of a crippling pandemic was a mere subsection on a World Health Organisation risk list, the myriad of potential future threats posed by the modern world had forced the wealthy to reassess the security around them. Gone (well at least for some) are the classic heavyset men in dark suits. Increasingly such ostentatious displays of security are being replaced by remote intelligence analysts.
Alex Bomberg, the CEO of security-firm Intelligent Protection International, says as well as supplying close protection – including during the outbreak where teams across Europe have been dispatched by their clients to buy essentials - he also runs an intelligence cell scanning for potential threats.
These range from potential PR disasters lurking in a client’s internet history to security issues in countries where they have interests, to the latest reports in science and medical journals. "People are really interested in horizon scanning," he says. "You need to see things coming."
For a subsection of society that depends utterly on the services of others to sustain their own lifestyles, the notion of an apocalypse does throw up a paradox for the super rich. What use is a private jet, after all, if you cannot find a pilot to fly it? Or as some in Britain have found in recent months – all the money in the world can still not buy you a private hospital bed if they have all been requisitioned by the NHS.
This notion of the apocalypse as a leveller has focused wealthy minds on their own health to increase their survival odds. Again, Silicon Valley has led the way, with the Reddit founder Steve Huffman admitting to getting laser eye surgery several years ago to correct his near-sightedness. Specifically, he said, as an insurance policy in case of some kind of world disaster. Yishan Wong, who served as CEO of the social media site between 2012 and 2014, has reportedly done the same.
Dr Romana Kuchai is the chief medical officer of Lexihealth, a London-based medical concierge which she co-founded with Quintessentially executive chairman Aaron Simpson two years ago. The 48-year-old, who combines her private work with being an ear, nose and throat surgeon at Imperial College NHS trust, counts multi-millionaires, billionaires and top executives among her clients.
The coronavirus outbreak (during which she has worked on the NHS frontline) will, she says, lead to a boom in wellness spending among the super rich as it has made them realise when disaster strikes they cannot simply buy their way out of everything.
At the start of the outbreak she was inundated with requests from clients requesting immune boosters and influenza vaccines, despite there being no science proving it would have any effect – something Dr Kuchai was only too happy to point out. In April it emerged some UK-based private clinics had been continuing to sell £200 intravenous drips containing ‘megadoses’ of vitamins that they claimed could help prevent the coronavirus.
Others among Dr Kuchai’s clients went further. One wealthy Asian client inquired about the possibility of pre-booking a British hospital room and a ventilator in case they were struck down by Covid-19. "The answer was a flat no – not in this country," Dr Kuchai says. Other clients considered buying their own ventilators due to the global shortage. "I had conversations with some of them to say even if you had a ventilator what are you going to do with it?", she says. "You need a whole team to operate it."
Personal protective equipment has also suddenly turned into a sought-after luxury commodity. Peak plague chic was Naomi Campbell teaming a hazmat suit with a Burberry cape. Gwyneth Paltrow was one of a number of celebrities to pose in photographs wearing an 'urban air mask' designed by the Swedish brand Airinum, leading to a mass sell out of the products which were later being re-sold for hundreds of pounds on online auction sites. Fredrik Kempe, the co-founder of the Swedish luxury brand, says daily sales have rocketed beyond 10 times what is normal.
Once the pandemic is over expect the super rich to stockpile such items to keep in storage, just in case. Dr Kuchai also predicts private health screening will rocket in popularity. "The focus will be more on prevention," she says. "Most of our clients have made their wealth and to enjoy it they want to maintain their health. That is a dual package and where the psychology will change."
Even in lockdown, though, wealth will find a way. Luxury concierge firms have, in recent months, been providing everything from private tutors to fine wine to delivering meals cooked by top chefs. Quintessentially signed a deal with the Michelin-starred chef Heston Blumenthal to create special recipes for their clients (or more likely their staff) to prepare at home.
While the stock market has tanked as society has ground to a standstill, finance analysts say there has been a global rush for cash. And notwithstanding the dent to their own empires, the super-rich still seemingly wish to continue spending it. Already some travel bookings have started to be made for 2021 – the Maldives, apparently, remain a favoured destination.
"The super rich are going to be the most insulated in terms of money buying you freedom," says Anthony Lassman, director of London-based firm Nota Bene, which arranges super luxury travel and the acquisition of ultra-prime real estate. When it comes to rising above Armageddon, he says, "you can always find a way if you have the means to do so."
At the turn of the year, as the coronavirus pandemic started to wreak havoc across the globe, nowhere was safe. Well, nearly nowhere. Some 50 owners of super yachts found themselves conveniently moored in the pristine waters of the Caribbean, self-isolating in style.
Roman Abramovich’s 533ft mega-yacht, Eclipse, and Ernesto Bertarelli’s similarly ostentatious cruiser, Vava II, were both reportedly spotted in the region. In March, the US billionaire David Geffen posted an update from aboard his 454ft superyacht, Rising Sun. ‘Isolated in the Grenadines avoiding the virus,’ the 77-year-old wrote in an Instagram post aboard the vessel which boasts a gym, cinema and wine cellar. ‘I’m hoping everybody is staying safe.’
The offending message – and subsequently Geffen’s entire Instagram account - were swiftly deleted following a social media backlash at the ‘tone-deaf’ response to the crisis as the deaths mounted up. But it served to reveal a universal truth: in good times, and in bad, the super rich do things differently.
Even before the Covid-19 pandemic swept the earth, its wealthiest citizens were devising new ways to protect themselves against future Armageddon. An entire industry has sprung up around creating bolt-holes safe from war, disease, climate emergency or whatever fresh nightmare is next heading our way. And even in the wake of global meltdown, still guaranteeing the levels of luxury to which some have grown accustomed.
In the rolling hills of central Kansas, property developer Larry Hall has been building a complex of so-called ‘survival condos’ on the site of a decommissioned Cold War nuclear bunker, originally engineered to withstand a five kilotonne nuclear warhead detonated within a half mile.
He first invested in the site following 9/11 and planned to develop an impregnable data centre for corporations to use. But noticing the increasing desire of high net worth individuals to seek ever greater protection for themselves and their families, he instead developed the survival condos.
The first batch are spread out across 54,000 square ft. Initially they all sold out after being advertised in 2012, but following the death of one investor a few are now back on the market, with the smallest available for $500,000 and the most expensive (three bed, two bath) for $3.4m.
Hall, a 63-year-old who hails from Denver, is now developing a second bunker on the site which can support up to 120 people. He intended to sell the units as individual condos but has received interest from the Middle East and a (unnamed) US company that wants to buy the whole facility outright.
The Middle East potential buyers have enquired about the possibility of adding an ‘underground James Bond-style heliport’ and a subterranean mosque connected to the main facility. The unnamed US bidders, meanwhile, are considering using it to house the company’s data – alongside luxury penthouses for their top executives.
Among the current owners of his condos, Hall includes ‘business leaders and billionaires’. Shared facilities include a climbing wall, 75ft indoor pool, cinema, games room and indoor shooting range. The bunker is also equipped with its own hydroponics and aquaculture to grow enough food to be self-sufficient, and is connected to two deep wells capable of producing 10,000 gallons of drinking water a day which can be stored in three underground 25,000 gallon storage tanks.
The complex uses ‘a set of military grade air filters’ which Hall blithely states can screen out Covid-19. "They filter every known pathogen to man," he says, "including things like nerve gas and viruses and bacteria and all that." The monthly service charge also covers state-of-the-art surveillance cameras, a passive sensor system and armed guards patrolling 24 hours a day.
"Originally when people purchased the condos their intent was to only use it in a catastrophe," says Hall. "But when they came here to do the final walkaround I got a lot of backhanded compliments that they didn’t expect them to be as nice as they were." Some owners, he says, come up here to while away long weekends or ‘get away from the hustle and bustle of their daily lives’ within the nuke-hardened concrete walls.
He estimates 80 per cent of his buyers have young children, with the condos intended as a family legacy to insulate against global collapse. "Our structural engineers estimate this facility will last 1,000 years," Hall says. "It will outlive the castles of Europe."
Society’s richest ensuring they have a bolthole to retreat to in times of emergency, is nothing new. During the Black Death, the wealthy fled London in their droves to sit out the plague in their country homes. Doctors, lawyers and merchants, all secured health certificates allowing them to leave the city. In the early summer of 1665, as cases started to rise, King Charles II and his courtiers left for Hampton Court, and then Oxford.
The onset of Covid-19 witnessed a similar exodus of second home owners from town to country, or indeed the other side of the world. The tech billionaires of Silicon Valley, whose wealth depends on predicting what is around the corner, have turbo-charged this notion of an escape route. For years they have been buying up bunkers and tracts of land as ‘apocalypse insurance’ propelled by science fiction fantasy and futurist chaos theory.
New Zealand was the favoured destination, with the US billionaire Peter Thiel, who co-founded Paypal, leading the charge buying a 477-acre former sheep station on the South Island. But in 2018 the country’s government introduced a law banning foreigners from buying most residential property. That has still not stopped the tech barons looking elsewhere.
Former Facebook product manager Antonio García Martínez (who declined to be interviewed for this article) has reportedly bought five wooded acres on an island in the Pacific Northwest and invested in generators, solar panels, and thousands of rounds of ammunition. Elon Musk continues to fantasise over the ultimate escape bolthole, declaring there is a 70 per cent chance he will flee Earth for Mars at some point in his lifetime.
The global lockdown engendered by coronavirus created a surge in interest in private jets. The number of private jet flights from Hong Kong to Australia and North America in January, for example, jumped 214 per cent compared with the previous year.
"People who would normally fly first class with their family started saying for the convenience of not being quarantined, or seeing other people, they would take private jets," says Giles Vickers-Jones, the founder and chairman of London-based private jet charter firm Shy Aviation.
Others prefer to keep helicopters fully fuelled should they require a quick escape. Even prior to the coronavirus lockdown, Vickers-Jones says, clients were bolting on extra days to their charters just in case they needed a quick exit route. Even as global shares have plunged, the demand for private jets has continued unabated.
Being able to get away, and stay away, Vickers-Jones says, has never been more vital for his wealthiest friends and clients. ‘They have turned their attention to property and land,’ he says. ‘They’re not selling, they’re buying.’
In recent months, the British luxury concierge company, Quintessentially, which has offices around the world, has seen a surge in requests from wealthy clients seeking to secure themselves a luxury bolthole to escape lockdown. Private yacht charters have also jumped.
"The virus has led to some rather unusual property requests," says Penny Mosgrove, CEO of the company’s property arm, Quintessentially Estates. "We’ve seen requests for castles with moats, homes in the middle of nowhere with plenty of grounds for isolation from the virus. One client even asked us to find a quote for an underground bunker."
Even way back in those heady months of 2019 when the notion of a crippling pandemic was a mere subsection on a World Health Organisation risk list, the myriad of potential future threats posed by the modern world had forced the wealthy to reassess the security around them. Gone (well at least for some) are the classic heavyset men in dark suits. Increasingly such ostentatious displays of security are being replaced by remote intelligence analysts.
Alex Bomberg, the CEO of security-firm Intelligent Protection International, says as well as supplying close protection – including during the outbreak where teams across Europe have been dispatched by their clients to buy essentials - he also runs an intelligence cell scanning for potential threats.
These range from potential PR disasters lurking in a client’s internet history to security issues in countries where they have interests, to the latest reports in science and medical journals. "People are really interested in horizon scanning," he says. "You need to see things coming."
For a subsection of society that depends utterly on the services of others to sustain their own lifestyles, the notion of an apocalypse does throw up a paradox for the super rich. What use is a private jet, after all, if you cannot find a pilot to fly it? Or as some in Britain have found in recent months – all the money in the world can still not buy you a private hospital bed if they have all been requisitioned by the NHS.
This notion of the apocalypse as a leveller has focused wealthy minds on their own health to increase their survival odds. Again, Silicon Valley has led the way, with the Reddit founder Steve Huffman admitting to getting laser eye surgery several years ago to correct his near-sightedness. Specifically, he said, as an insurance policy in case of some kind of world disaster. Yishan Wong, who served as CEO of the social media site between 2012 and 2014, has reportedly done the same.
Dr Romana Kuchai is the chief medical officer of Lexihealth, a London-based medical concierge which she co-founded with Quintessentially executive chairman Aaron Simpson two years ago. The 48-year-old, who combines her private work with being an ear, nose and throat surgeon at Imperial College NHS trust, counts multi-millionaires, billionaires and top executives among her clients.
The coronavirus outbreak (during which she has worked on the NHS frontline) will, she says, lead to a boom in wellness spending among the super rich as it has made them realise when disaster strikes they cannot simply buy their way out of everything.
At the start of the outbreak she was inundated with requests from clients requesting immune boosters and influenza vaccines, despite there being no science proving it would have any effect – something Dr Kuchai was only too happy to point out. In April it emerged some UK-based private clinics had been continuing to sell £200 intravenous drips containing ‘megadoses’ of vitamins that they claimed could help prevent the coronavirus.
Others among Dr Kuchai’s clients went further. One wealthy Asian client inquired about the possibility of pre-booking a British hospital room and a ventilator in case they were struck down by Covid-19. "The answer was a flat no – not in this country," Dr Kuchai says. Other clients considered buying their own ventilators due to the global shortage. "I had conversations with some of them to say even if you had a ventilator what are you going to do with it?", she says. "You need a whole team to operate it."
Personal protective equipment has also suddenly turned into a sought-after luxury commodity. Peak plague chic was Naomi Campbell teaming a hazmat suit with a Burberry cape. Gwyneth Paltrow was one of a number of celebrities to pose in photographs wearing an 'urban air mask' designed by the Swedish brand Airinum, leading to a mass sell out of the products which were later being re-sold for hundreds of pounds on online auction sites. Fredrik Kempe, the co-founder of the Swedish luxury brand, says daily sales have rocketed beyond 10 times what is normal.
Once the pandemic is over expect the super rich to stockpile such items to keep in storage, just in case. Dr Kuchai also predicts private health screening will rocket in popularity. "The focus will be more on prevention," she says. "Most of our clients have made their wealth and to enjoy it they want to maintain their health. That is a dual package and where the psychology will change."
Even in lockdown, though, wealth will find a way. Luxury concierge firms have, in recent months, been providing everything from private tutors to fine wine to delivering meals cooked by top chefs. Quintessentially signed a deal with the Michelin-starred chef Heston Blumenthal to create special recipes for their clients (or more likely their staff) to prepare at home.
While the stock market has tanked as society has ground to a standstill, finance analysts say there has been a global rush for cash. And notwithstanding the dent to their own empires, the super-rich still seemingly wish to continue spending it. Already some travel bookings have started to be made for 2021 – the Maldives, apparently, remain a favoured destination.
"The super rich are going to be the most insulated in terms of money buying you freedom," says Anthony Lassman, director of London-based firm Nota Bene, which arranges super luxury travel and the acquisition of ultra-prime real estate. When it comes to rising above Armageddon, he says, "you can always find a way if you have the means to do so."
