Cold War bunkers converted into homes

The underground shelters of the Cold War have found themselves the object of an unexpected passion among property developers – monumental buildings adapted to modern comfort and made ultrasecure.

When a bunker is being purchased, the depth, the thickness of the rock, the ventilation and the energy self-sufficiency replace the more prosaic concerns about the state of the roof and the floor area. In Cherbourg harbour, Chavagnac Fort will have no problems with her neighbours. This 37-room bunker-island that the navy has just sold is accessible only by boat. Neither the price nor the buyer, a Parisian promoter, have been revealed. In the port, the figure of €50,000 is rumoured. With its obsession about being invaded, Britain is covered with military facilities and nuclear shelters. In the current geopolitical turmoil, promoters in London have noted that these properties are snapped up by a rich clientele sensitive to the apocalyptic scenarios of nuclear war or disruption by artificial intelligence. In Yorkshire, the Warning and Monitoring Organisation – the civilian agency that provided communications about radioactive fallout and was dismantled in 1992 – put one of its shelters up for sale. The starting price: €22,600, for the equivalent of a studio flat. The closer you get to the capital, the higher the prices!

The survival-chic trend is flourishing in Switzerland, where a luxury bunker with storage tanks, internet access and surveillance has sold for€22 million. Its location is of course kept secret. Another democratic land, Sweden, had designed enough nuclear shelters to accommodate the entire population. There are 180,000 bunkers. Many were filled in at the end of the Cold War.

A clientele sensitive to the scenarios of nuclear war and disruption by AI

Currently, they are being revived from obsolescence and grabbed for premium prices to be turned into data centres. The Nordic climate is an asset when it comes to venting the heat generated by thousands of computers. Lost in the middle of lakes and forests, a Swedish company installed itself in a bunker located at a depth of 60 metres under a mountain of granite. Sold at auction for €130,000, the space narrowly escaped the Hells Angels, who intended to use it for growing a certain illegal substance. Its future will be more techie.

Protected from the blast of a nuclear explosion by a kilometre-long horseshoe-shaped tunnel, Rockan enjoys ultramodern facilities: fibre optics, a helipad, a control room inspired by the film Dr Strangelove, gym halls and, above all, two diesel generators to ensure it is energy self-sufficient. While our data is digitised, a world of machines is being built anew in the underground lairs where our most secret information is kept. In the USA, the 20th Century Castles estate agency specialises in the renovation of military facilities, such as the Atlas missile base in Kansas where, over an area of 600 m2, the comfort of a post-apocalyptic existence can be bought for €2.8 million. Our habitat in the guise of our secure areas is informed by the military architecture of the 20th century. Philip K. Dick got it right.