Designed with luxurious comfort in mind, the Survival Condo serves a practical purpose, too. It’s a series of residential units within a superstructure that offers the highest level of physical protection for extended off-grid survival.
“Post 9/11,” says Larry Hall, project manager/owner of Luxury Survival Condo, “I saw a need for hardened off-site backup data facilities. There was a glut in the market for data centers, so I decided to create a backup living facility for people instead.” The condo is built in a former Atlas missile silo. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) built the silo using a special blend of concrete with an epoxy additive that made the concrete more flexible and stronger for withstanding a nuclear shock wave. Some consider the silo one of the strongest structures built by man. The State of Kansas, the USACE, and the Environmental Protection Agency performed a series of tests to make sure the site was safe.
Reconstruction included removing the old steel down to a clean concrete shell. The original structure extends 200 feet below the earth’s surface and has concrete walls between 2.5 and 9 feet thick. There are more than 600 tons of high-strength rebar. In total, there is more than 54,000 square feet of underground, nuclear-hardened, protected space.
“The selection of experienced concrete contractor, Kolde Construction Inc., was critical due to the wide range of pours required,” says Hall. “We had old areas to demolish, areas to fill, new construction to add, and the incorporation of blast valves and extensive rebar that is up to 2.25 inches in diameter. Working with the shear mass of the silo was a challenge,” adds Hall. It took about two years to complete the first Survival Condo. Construction on the second condo has begun and there are currently plans to work on more.