This Retro Bunker Is Part Creepy, Part Awesome
Buried 26 feet below ground and 40 years in the past.
Twenty-six feet beneath the surface of Paradise Palms, Nevada, the 1970s are alive and kickin’. Pink toilets, shag carpet, and the ugliest kitchen you’ve ever seen are preserved in peak condition inside a Cold-War-era fallout shelter. The whole thing looks straight out of Brendan Fraser’s “Blast From The Past.”
Built in 1978 by paranoid businessman Girard “Jerry” B. Henderson, this tricked-out bomb shelter was outfitted with all the accoutrements of 70s suburban life, including green “grass” carpets, a swimming pool, two jacuzzis and a grill designed to look like a boulder. All this, presumably, so Henderson could continue to live his boring-ass life for up to a year below ground as the world above crumbled into radioactive oblivion.
If I weren’t so spooked by this vacuum-sealed Stepford-esque utopia, I’d have to give the architects credit. They really did think of everything—from a convincing outdoor garden (complete with fake trees and a four-hole putting green) to lights that adjust to “daylight,” “sunset,” “dusk” and “night” settings. The walls are painted with a realistic natural landscape and the “night” sky is outfitted with tiny twinkling stars.
Interested in buying this doomsday paradise? Sorry, folks. The property was purchased for $1.5 million in 2014 by the mysteriously named “Society for the Preservation of Near Extinct Species.” Yep, that seems right.