Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, has been acquiring a large parcel of land on a Hawaiian island to build a luxury estate, including a secretive underground bunker.
The estate will feature multiple buildings, including mansions, guesthouses, and a 5,000 square foot underground shelter.
“A few years ago, Priscilla and I visited Kauai and fell in love with the community and the cloudy green mountains,” Zuckerberg said in 2016.
“We kept coming back with family and friends, and eventually decided to plant roots and join the community ourselves.”
“We bought land and we’re dedicated to preserving its natural beauty. It’s filled with wildlife like pigs, turtles, rare birds and seals, and local farmers use it to grow fruits and spices. I love taking Max to explore and see all the animals,” he said.
The property will be self-sustainable, producing its own food and water.
“[The] compound consists of more than a dozen buildings with at least 30 bedrooms and 30 bathrooms in total,” tech magazine Wired wrote.
“It is centred around two mansions with a total floor area comparable to a professional football field [5295 square metres] which contain multiple elevators, offices, conference rooms, and an industrial-sized kitchen.”
“In a nearby wooded area, a web of 11 disk-shaped tree houses are planned, which will be connected by intricate rope bridges, allowing visitors to cross from one building to the next while staying among the treetops,” they reported.
“A building on the other side of the main mansions will include a full-size gym, pools, sauna, hot tub, cold plunge, and tennis court. The property is dotted with other guesthouses and operations buildings.”
“The plans show that the two central mansions will be joined by a tunnel that branches off into a 5,000 square foot [464 square metres] underground shelter, featuring living space, a mechanical room, and an escape hatch that can be accessed via a ladder,” Wired added.
“It’s fight club,” a former contractor said. “We don’t talk about fight club.”
The project has sparked interest in underground shelters, with reports of heightened demand from the elite for such structures.
“[It] caused a buying frenzy [and] the phone hasn’t stopped ringing [like] World War III is coming,” Atlas Survival Shelters’ Ron Hubbard said.
“Now that Zuckerberg has let the cat out of the bag, that’s got other people who share his status or are near his status starting to think, ‘Oh God, if he’s doing that, maybe he knows something that I don’t, maybe I should seek this out myself,” Del Mar bunker design and construction company founder Robert Vicino said.
“But it’s no secret that the one-percenters and top-ranking government officials have been in on this bunker idea for a long-[expletive] time. The pandemic was a huge driver of interest in sales; then all the global concerns and issues at home are another boost.”
The construction of the bunker has led to speculation about Zuckerberg’s motivations, but it may simply be a small fraction of his massive wealth being used for this purpose.
“Mark Zuckerberg’s net worth in 2024 is an almost unfathomable AU$260 billion,” Katherine Guinness, Grant Bollmer and Tom Doig wrote.
“A $400 million Hawaiian fortress, extravagant as it might be, represents less than 0.2 per cent of his total wealth. As a percentage, this is comparable to a household with a net worth of $1 million (the average net worth in Australia) spending just $1,540,” they wrote, adding, “since they have far more money than they know what to do with, they may as well use a small fraction of it to build underground fortresses.”
“Bill Gates, for example, owns at least eight properties in the US alone and, according to The Hollywood Reporter, ‘is rumoured to have underground security areas under every one of his homes,'” they wrote.
“For billionaires, putting money into such projects doesn’t mean they’re crazy, or paranoid, or in possession of some special secret knowledge about the future. It simply means they’ve amassed such colossal surpluses of wealth, they may as well use it for something.”
The demand for high-end bunkers among the wealthy has led to the creation of luxurious and secure underground shelters designed by architects.