How to shop for the apocalypse

 New York City

An architect friend who usually designs Manhattan skyscrapers was recently asked to pitch for a far more interesting project. The client, a senior partner at Goldman Sachs, wanted him to design a family house in upstate New York with a difference. It wouldn’t just be completely ‘off the grid’, with its own power and water supplies, but — and there isn’t yet an architectural term for this — it would be post-apocalypse. The conventional house would be mirrored below ground with pretty much identical living quarters that would be completely secure and so self-contained that there would be facilities to hydroponically grow plants and vegetables without soil. ‘Americans shouldn’t believe they’re immune to social unrest’ was all the prospective client would offer by way of explanation. He primarily wanted the house as a refuge for his own family but also, he revealed magnanimously, saw it as a possible rallying point for humanity in the event of some future catastrophe. The strange thing was that when my friend rang a mechanical engineer for advice on a few technical details, rather than be gobsmacked, the engineer said he’d been working on pretty much the same brief for another Wall Street titan. Only he wanted a moat, too. ‘What do they know that we don’t?’ the architect asked me. You could pose the same question of the rich libertarian Americans quietly buying up land on the central Pacific coast near Santiago. Galt’s Gulch, Freedom Orchard and Sovereign Valley Farm are all names of putative Chilean enclaves for like-minded conservatives and their loved ones. Here they will live when the US economy collapses under the weight of big-spending liberals like Barack Obama and America is plunged into complete social meltdown and/or a police state. Chile’s attractions include low taxes, privatised social security, a pleasant climate and a decent international airport.