The Ultimate Bunker

[OverTheTop]

https://www.domain.com.au/news/the-...ould-be-yours-for-a-cool-27-5-million-957789/

 

[afadeev]

https://www.domain.com.au/news/the-...ould-be-yours-for-a-cool-27-5-million-957789/

Holly cow - this is what I would imagine Barbie's bunker would have looked like!

Seriously, though, if one is in a mood for a bunker, it's hard to beat decommissioned US missile silos.
Like this Titan-II silo, that seams to still be on the market for the asking price of $395K.
It's a fixer-upper, but still, real deal with $27.1M left in the budget for renovations:
https://www.luxerealtyphotography.com/titan-missile-site-for-sale
If you are not into fixer-upper projects, but like history, then these guys have a missile silo B&B near Topeka :
https://www.cjonline.com/news/busin...lear-missile-silo-wabaunsee-county-now-airbnb

 

[DAllen]

Lawdy hath merthy is that decor in the Las Vegas bunker UGLY.

Those missle silos are interesting but I see a BIG issue before you can even dream of doing anything with them...paint. Everything is rusting out and I wonder how much of that is lead based paint? Just stripping and repainting all of that steel is going to be millions. I work for the Michigan DOT and was just involved on a 70 year old 500' long 4 lane bridge with LOADS of steel work under it. (Fortunately, it had already been repainted once in the 90's so we didn't have to deal with lead paint.) I have to believe one of these silos would be at least as much steel to paint and far more difficult to do. Our bridge took 2 months and a crew of 8 guys with a humongous steel shot blast rig along with all the associated equipment - paint pumps, platform, enclosures, crane, skytrack, air handler, etc. Yeeeesh. If I think of it at work I'll look up how much just the blasting and painting was...

Just walking around in one of those silos looks like someplace you ought to have a full face respirator on to me lol....

 

[Reinhard]

Seriously, though, if one is in a mood for a bunker, it's hard to beat decommissioned US missile silos.
Like this Titan-II silo, that seams to still be on the market for the asking price of $395K.
It's a fixer-upper, but still, real deal with $27.1M left in the budget for renovations:
https://www.luxerealtyphotography.com/titan-missile-site-for-sale

A video of the deactivation process got posted here a few weeks ago:


The cool parts have been reduced to rubble. It's only a bunker now.

Reinhard

 

[PXR5]

There was a movie made back in the 1970s that was filmed in a set like that house.

Even though there wasn't a war, the family stayed underground anyway.

I'll have to ask my associate the name of it, she remembers everything

 

[David Schwantz]

Does the silo come with a permanent waiver??

 

[boatgeek]

Does the silo come with a permanent waiver??

I think the USAF planned to ask for forgiveness not permission if they ever needed to launch an ICBM.

 

[David Schwantz]

Maybe, but I meant if I buy it, do I get a permanent waiver? So I can launch as many HPRs whenever I want!!

 

[mikewrt]

Maybe, but I meant if I buy it, do I get a permanent waiver? So I can launch as many HPRs whenever I want!!

Yes but must be launching out of the silo...

 

[David Schwantz]

I can do that! I fell out of a silo as a kid and broke both my legs.

 

[afadeev]

Those missle silos are interesting but I see a BIG issue before you can even dream of doing anything with them...paint. Everything is rusting out and I wonder how much of that is lead based paint?

Zero lead paint!
I know a fellow who had picked up one of those ex-Titan-II puppies, and tested the paint just for that reason. Tests came back negative for lead.
Rust and water are a problem. Much more so on AK/KS, less so in AZ.

The cool parts have been reduced to rubble. It's only a bunker now.

Not exactly.
The tops of access portal and the missile silo did get blasted off, and holes filled with dirt and debris. The former is easily cleared and repaired, the latter - much harder due to the sheer size of the silo.
Once you get to the access portal's ingress door, the rest of the complex (minus the silo) is fully available and undamaged: multiple rooms within the access portal, cableway/tunnel to the control center, and 3 levels of the control center (CC). Doors work, as do most door actuators.
Everything inside the CC is usually still there, minus electronic and radio equipment.
The decommissioning process was supposed to strip it all bare and fill many areas with gravel and concrete, but contractors cut corners at every turn (no pun intended). Still, most of the wiring and plumbing is now useless, and is severed in places, and you would want to gut it all to unclutter the space.

Just stripping and repainting all of that steel is going to be millions.

Only 4 figures if you hire someone to come in and do it, since the cost of stripping is offset by the revenue from scrapping the metal.
Turning the space into something livable and enjoyable is up to the owner.

Personally, I don't see doing it myself. Nor is there a spare silo near where I live.
But it's a cool and unique piece of history, and I see why some are attracted to these projects.
There was an article somewhere that calculated the inflation-adjusted cost of constructing one of the Titan-II complexes in present-day $$s. The total was around $1.2B.

a

 

[DAllen]

Only 4 figures, since the cost of stripping is offset by the revenue from scrapping the metal.

Lol no. Current scrap steel is $83/ton which is going to equate to about 3.5 hours of one basic manual laborer - or much less time than that. Shockingly, laborers do not like to work in such dangerous conditions without getting compensated. And yes, it'll be really hazardous and really unpleasant what with all the cutting torches and resulting fumes and heat.

Here's a good exercise: Try moving one ton ($83 dollars worth) of steel from one end of that facility to the other so your crane can lift it out because there is only one hole available on the silo end. Can you do it within 3.5 hours? It'll be lifting 50 lbs per trip and would mean 40 trips and doing that round trip once every 5.25 minutes. You'll never be able to hire anyone with the physical stamina to do that day in and day out. Plus given the depth of that hole you're going to need a sizeable crane to remove said scrap. Even smallish cranes rent out at $500/hour so just to pay for the crane assuming all your labor is free you'd need to be lifting 1 ton per 10 minutes out of the hole which if you've ever seen a crane operate you know is a super duper tall order. Oh and don't forget the 18 wheeler (or dumpster) you're going to need to hire to haul all of that beautiful scrap miles and miles away to the nearest scrap yard. And then not all of the steel is going to be salvageable. A lot of it will need to remain as structural steel to hold back the earth so you're back to stripping and painting A LOT of steel. One million. Minimum. And thats just to get it where you can start thinking about installing living quarters. You will lose money on scrapping steel.

I've been figuring out this sort of thing for a living for a little over 20 years.

 

[afadeev]

Lol no. [...]I've been figuring out this sort of thing for a living for a little over 20 years.

This:

 

[OverTheTop]

What a great little series on the process of renovating one of those launch facilities .

 

[DAllen]

This:

Yeah that's kind of my point. No way are you making any money whatsoever off of scrap to pay for any further restorations.

Couple of takeaways for me from that...First that contractor lost his a$$ on that job. Originally quoted 10 days at $7500 which is obviously $750/day and that seems ludicrously low to me so the laborers probably aren't getting paid jack. Then it actually took them 6 weeks or 30 days. Next time that contractor does a job like that they'll charge much closer to $25,000 I'm sure. Second, that Grade-all is a much much smaller piece of equipment than what I was envisioning because I was figuring to safely lift things out of a hole you really do not want your crane right at the edge of the hole. What saw there was kinda sketchy if you ask me. You're better off with a real crane that has a bit of reach. Third - speaking of sketchy I don't think I saw a single hard hat (maybe there was and I missed it in the time lapse) in any of that footage which is rather telling. OSHA fines are expensive. Fourth - looks like they only worked in the center chamber and not in the silo or the other part which is what I was thinking of.

Still though, even after all that scrap removal there is still an unbelievable amount of work to be done. I still think to strip and paint all three of those chambers its going to be at least a million. I can't stress enough being underground how important it is to protect all that steel from further corrosion in what is undoubtedly a wet environment.