Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is building a vast bunker complex in Hawaii, with backup properties in Palo Alto and Lake Tahoe. Elon Musk is developing a massive compound in Texas. OpenAI chief Sam Altman has a hidden underground shelter. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos also owns several fortified estates.
While much of the world worries about collapse, Silicon Valley’s billionaires are quietly preparing to outlast it, spending hundreds of millions on luxury survivalist retreats.
These bunkers run on solar energy, feature advanced air and water filtration, hydroponic farms for soil-free crops, full medical facilities — and no shortage of luxuries. Fitness centers, pools, cinemas and vast living quarters are designed to allow the world’s richest men to ride out an apocalypse in comfort.
Critics call it a moral failure, but the billionaires themselves embrace the trend. The group has even been dubbed the “Broligarchy” — a blend of “bros” and “oligarchy” — a club for the ultra-wealthy preparing for the end.
Zuckerberg’s real estate arms race
Zuckerberg leads the pack by far. Over the past decade, he has embarked on a real estate spree that has stunned even fellow billionaires. In Palo Alto’s affluent Crescent Park neighborhood, he has spent more than $110 million buying at least 11 homes, often through shell companies with names inspired by nature, such as Pine Burrow or Seed Breeze.
According to The New York Times, five of those homes have been merged into a private compound that includes guesthouses, lush gardens, a pickleball court and a pool with a retractable floor. Guests at Zuckerberg’s barbecues have also seen a two-meter-tall statue of his wife, Priscilla Chan, in a silver robe.
In 2016, Zuckerberg sought approval to demolish four adjacent homes and rebuild them with “large basements” — permits labeled them as cellars, but neighbors called them bunkers. Construction lasted eight years, filling the streets with noise, surveillance cameras and a constant private security presence.
Hawaii’s fortress
Beyond Palo Alto, Zuckerberg is also building a new estate at Lake Tahoe and recently purchased a $23 million mansion in Washington, D.C. But his most ambitious project is in Kauai, Hawaii, where he owns 2.3 square kilometers of land — three times the size of New York’s Central Park.
The estate, known as Ko’olau Ranch, stretches from mountain ridges to the Pacific. It includes two mansions, rope-bridge-connected treehouses and a fortified underground shelter. Valued at around $300 million, it has become Zuckerberg’s ultimate escape plan.
Other billionaires dig in
Zuckerberg is not alone. Altman has admitted to owning a heavily fortified underground structure — though he resists calling it a bunker. He told a podcast last month that he may build another one, citing renewed fears of global conflict: “It’s not because of AI. It’s because people are dropping bombs again.”
Bezos has multiple isolated estates, some in climate-risk areas of Florida, though he appears more focused on flaunting his wealth — with a lavish wedding in Venice and space launches for his fiancée — than building apocalypse shelters.
Musk, meanwhile, has constructed a sprawling 4-square-kilometer estate outside Austin, Texas, at a reported cost of $35 million. The complex includes multiple homes for his 12 children, three estates for their mothers and extensive land. Musk, however, is less concerned with bunkers. When disaster comes, he has said, he’ll take his family to Mars.