Business is booming for companies selling bomb shelters

A vintage illustration of a family building a bomb shelter.
(Image credit: Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

There's no better time than now to be in the bomb shelter business.

Atlas Survival, a company in Montebello, California, sells products like the Bombnado — a shelter with a seating area, bunk beds, and plenty of storage, which is intended to be built under a house while it is under construction — and the Fallnado, designed to go inside a garage. Owner Ron Hubbard told ABC Los Angeles that ever since President Trump warned North Korea that if it attacked the United States with a nuclear weapon, he would hit back with "fire and fury," sales have skyrocketed. "Instead of calling me like they normally do, they've gone in their car and they've driven down here to see what is available," he said. "[They] buy them on the spot, and I've never seen that in my entire career doing this."

For those who have money to fork over, Atlas Survival also sells luxury bomb shelters, which start at $100,000. They come with a bedroom, bathroom, living room, and kitchen, covering 500 square feet, and are designed to be installed 20 feet underground. Over the last two days, Atlas Survival has sold it's entire stock of 30 bomb shelters — a record, Hubbard said.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up
Explore More
Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.