A survival bunker salesman is licking his lips thanks to President Donald Trump’s war in Iran.
Larry Hall, a soft-spoken 69-year-old originally from upstate New York and now living in Colorado, had spent his career building data centers for defense contractors, including Northrop Grumman, but the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks changed his direction in life.
After the 9/11 attacks, he initially planned to build hardened data-storage facilities to protect information infrastructure, but pivoted to building shelters for “ultra high net worth people,” as he calls his customers.
Hall bought his first former Atlas-F missile silo in 2008 for about $300,000 after learning the government was auctioning off decommissioned Cold War weapons sites. He then moved with his wife, Lori, and their son from Florida to Colorado to launch the bunker business that eventually became the Kansas-based Survival Condo project.
The project is less a bunker and more a luxury-apocalypse fantasy, buried 15 stories underground inside the decommissioned nuclear missile silo. The complex comes complete with a subterranean swimming pool and water slide, saunas, a movie theater, a dog park, a weapons cache, digital “windows” that simulate the outdoors, and enough diesel generators, battery banks, air filtration systems, and underground water access to ride out nuclear war in comfort. Residents enter through 16-ton blast doors guarded by armed security before descending into multimillion-dollar condos stocked for end-times living.
There are 14 condos at the site, which can comfortably hold up to 75 people in total. Hall’s armageddon-proof real estate empire doesn’t come cheap. Half-floor bunker units in the former missile silo range from $1.2 million to $1.5 million, while full-floor condos are listed for up to $3 million. Buyers looking to weather a nuclear apocalypse in maximum comfort can spring for a two-story underground penthouse starting at roughly $4.5 million. The bunker has enough supplies to last its occupants for five years.
Larry has President Donald Trump to thank for an uptick in interest. After Trump teamed up with Israel to launch “Operation Epic Fury” on Feb. 28, Larry’s phone started ringing more than usual. “It seems like my level of inquiries definitely follows world events and threats,” he told the Daily Beast.
Larry has plenty of business outside the Kansas operation, but he reckons about 90 percent of it is bound by non-disclosure agreements. Previous coverage of the Survival Condo facility was enough to see him sell every unit, however. “I built that on speculation and sold out the individuals. It’s been sold out a couple of different times. I’ve had a few people who have died, and we’ve resold units and stuff,” he said.
Larry said he only has two half-floor units available now, but he expects them to be snapped up because of the war. “The level of inquiries has more than doubled since the Iran war started. It was already at a higher-than-normal level because of the Russia-Ukraine conflict,” he said.
Larry had lined up potential suitors to come and see the Kansas condos earlier this year, but massive TSA lines meant business stalled.
The COVID-19 pandemic and the persistent fear of nuclear warfare have also supported Larry’s business. “A lot of our customers cite that they’ve seen a lot of our material on the internet, and it struck a chord with them. A lot of them point out that they like the concept of a community and a nuclear-hardened facility,” he said.
“The lesson learned from COVID is that a lot of people experienced is that they like the ability to safely interact with other adults and discuss whatever threat necessitated them going into the bunker in the first place.”
Larry said that the pandemic “made the bunker business way more legitimate and not so much a fringe concept as it was prior.”
He said that some people might consider moving into what is effectively an apocalypse-busting bunker a bit extreme, but insisted it is not. “The threat’s out there, so having a plan, especially for the number of high and ultra high net worth people to have a bunker with the capability to filter air, to keep the air safe and keep their families safe, is now something that they’re willing to consider.”
Hall was at pains to suggest that he had taken something synonymous with death and fear, a nuclear silo, and flipped its meaning. “It used to be a weapon of mass destruction, and I turned it into the complete opposite. Now it saves families’ lives,” he said.
Asked about whether he supports Trump’s war, Hall, who voted for the Republican president in the 2024 election, struck a different tone. “I wish somebody had done it a long time ago,” he told the Beast.
He cited the Iranian regime’s perceived intolerance to other religions, hostage-taking, and antagonism to the U.S. and said it was more like a “terrorist organization.”
“I wish somebody had done it a long time ago to put an end to that, and there’d be a lot less suffering in the world had that been done a long time ago. So, I don’t fault him [Trump] for doing that at all,” he said.
