Billionaire Bunkers: Inside the Rise of Doomsday Prep in TV & Real Life

Sam Altman’s got one – though Mark Zuckerberg’s is reportedly bigger. Peter Thiel’s is described as “mega” and located in New Zealand. These days, a doomsday bunker (or, in Elon Musk’s case, an “apocalypse resort”) is almost de rigueur for any self-respecting billionaire – a trend that begs the question of whether they know something the rest of us don’t.

This fascination with impressive underground real estate is playing out on screen as well. Recent dramas are exploring the anxieties and ironies of preparing for the end of the world, often with a focus on the ultra-wealthy. Perhaps the most ambitious example is Paradise on Disney+, in which tech-billionaire Samantha Redmond (Julianne Nicholson) funds a staggeringly elaborate building project under the codename “Versailles”. Unlike some narratives focused on saving a select few, Redmond’s ambition extends to building “the world’s largest underground city”, an ersatz all-American suburb designed to accommodate 25,000 people while a climate catastrophe unfolds above.

The show’s initial bait-and-switch was particularly effective. “I did not see it coming!” laughs Krys Marshall, who plays secret service agent Nicole Robinson. “Reading the script, I was like, ‘Page 63 … Page 64 … Page 65?!!!’ It was a total shock.”

As Paradise returns for a second season, it introduces a subtle twist. The nukes believed to have detonated topside never actually went off, and the world outside the bunker proves more nuanced than the post-apocalyptic wasteland the survivors initially imagined.

“One of the beautiful things about our show is we don’t have this totally dystopian experience of ‘the end of days is the worst of days,’” says Marshall. “We’re watching what happens when folks are down but they’re not out, and how their resilience keeps them alive.”

This approach contrasts with another popular bunker-themed series, Fallout, based on the hit video-game series. In Fallout, a bland corporate elite survives in highly sanitized 1950s-styled bunkers, while the world above has become a “wasteland” populated by mutated monsters and bizarre post-apocalyptic humans, including mech-suited warrior-monks and cosplaying Roman soldiers.

The most compelling character in Fallout is “the Ghoul” (Walton Goggins), who exists both before and after the nuclear Armageddon – initially as Hollywood actor Cooper Howard, and later as a noseless undead gunslinger reliant on medication to prevent himself from becoming “feral”.

The shows suggest a common theme: the greatest threat often comes from within the bunker itself. In Fallout, Hank MacLean (Kyle MacLachlan), the father of the show’s protagonist Lucy, is revealed to have triggered the atom bombs. Similarly, in Paradise, the most terrifying figure isn’t a brutal inhabitant of the post-apocalyptic world, but Redmond, the ruthless billionaire behind the bunker project, and her associate Jane (Nicole Brydon Bloom).

Nicole Brydon Bloom’s real-life connection to Fallout adds another layer of intrigue. She is married to Justin Theroux, who plays the Howard-Hughes-like casino proprietor responsible for the nuclear winter depicted in the series. “I hadn’t watched it until he got the part,” she admits. “It’s not really my preferred genre. Now I’m obsessed. It’s fantastical and terrifying in its own way. But what really drew me to Paradise is that it could be two years from now, it could be tomorrow.”

Apple TV’s Silo offers another take on the bunker narrative, exploring a community that has been underground for so long it has lost touch with its own history. The show’s setting, a massive vertical structure, emphasizes the power imbalance between the elites at the top and the workers below. Author Hugh Howey, whose novels inspired the series, describes the story as exploring “this tension of how we can live free while also being governed, and the freedoms we’re willing to sacrifice in order to live in a society.”

The production design of Silo, particularly its iconic spiral staircase, was a significant undertaking. Production designer Gavin Bocquet drew inspiration from Brutalist architecture, noting that even in isolated Brutalist buildings, a sense of normalcy persists. The team ultimately built a 45-foot section of the silo, and Howey was deeply moved to see his imagined world brought to life. “They’d built three storeys of the silo to full scale, strong enough to support hundreds of actors at a time. To go from being a solitary writer making something up in my own mind, to seeing this group of people working together to build it, was one of the most emotional experiences of my life.”

While Silo’s set is impressively constructed, the cast of Paradise enjoys a more comfortable filming experience, shooting their scenes outside on the Paramount backlot under the California sun. “I will say I much prefer our bunker!” laughs Krys Marshall. “Ours is a glam bunker. Theirs looks like it’s just a hair above hell.”

These shows, in their different ways, tap into a broader cultural anxiety about the future and the lengths to which the wealthy will go to secure their survival. They also raise questions about the nature of power, control, and the illusion of safety, even in the most meticulously constructed shelters.