Buying a bomb shelter for the apocalypse

Look folks, how many times do we have to say it? There is no such thing as zombies, so the undead apocalypse is not going to happen.

And most of us knew the Mayan apocalypse wasn’t going to happen, so everyone please relax, because the end of the world isn’t coming any time soon.

That’s still not going to stop anyone from trying to prepare themselves just in case. While I was cruising around the net, I came across a photograph of somebody sitting inside what looked like a gigantic sewer pipe. The guy in the photo was named Ron Hubbard, and he owns a company called Atlas Survival Shelters, which sells backyard bomb shelters. 

As the L.A. Times informs us, the big metal thing that looks to me like an overgrown iron lung is an escape tunnel, and it’s 33 feet long. Atlas Survival Shelters is a company located in Montebello, CA, a city in East L.A., and if you want the best bomb shelter money can buy, it could end up costing you $78,000. 

Of course none of us would want to be caught short if the world came to an end, but would you spend $78,000 to make absolutely sure? Who’s got this kind of money? Who’s already got one in their backyard just in case? Hubbard assured the Times that the people who buy these things are “practical people. I get maybe three crazy calls a year.” He also told the Times he was getting a phone call a day before the Mayan apocalypse was about to arrive, but he needed a six week lead time to build the bomb shelter of your dreams. 

Not surprisingly, especially with the economy still in bad shape, this report tells us that Hubbard’s company hasn’t made a ton of money selling these things. He started Atlas in 2011, and made no money that year, but he actually wound up in the black last year, and Hubbard hopes to make a profit this year. (Originally Hubbard was making wrought-iron doors before getting into the doomsday business).

And of course, having a company this bizarre got Hubbard on several reality TV shows, including Shipping Wars, where a group of movers were trying to figure out how to get one of these monstrosities onto a truck and get it where it needed to go.

So again, if you have to have it and feel 100% secure, start saving your pennies, although if someone eventually realizes the apocalypse really isn’t at hand and decides to get rid of one of these things, maybe one day you can get it much cheaper on Ebay. How on earth they’ll ship it to your house, and what shipping would cost, is anyone’s guess…