The 'Doomsday shelter' being built below Kansas prairie where millionaires will be able to sit out the Apocalypse in style
When you buy a house, you end up feeling like you will be paying it off until the world ends.
Well, how about one of these luxurious condos, which come with all the mod-cons, as well as a pool, a movie theater and a library - oh, and a guarantee that it will survive Doomsday if and when that fateful day comes.
For these luxury flats, deep below the Kansas prairie in the shaft of an abandoned missile silo, are meant to withstand everything from economic collapse and solar flares to terrorist attacks and pandemics.
Naturally, there will be no one around to phone if the guarantee fails - but at that point, the insurance will probably be the least of your worries.
So far, four buyers have thrown down a total of about $7million (£4.4m) for havens to flee to when disaster happens or the end is nigh. And developer Larry Hall has options to retro-fit three more Cold War-era silos when this one fills up.
Hall said: 'They worry about events ranging from solar flares, to economic collapse, to pandemics to terrorism to food shortages.'
These 'doomsday preppers', as they are called, want a safe place and he will be there with them because Hall, 55, bought one of the condos for himself. He says his fear is that sun flares could wipe out the power grid and cause chaos.
He and his wife and son live in Denver and will use their condo mostly as a vacation home, he says, but if the grid goes, they will be ready.
Hall isn't the first person to buy an abandoned nuclear missile silo and transform at least part of it into a shelter.
Built to withstand an atomic blast, even the most paranoid can find comfort inside concrete walls that are nine feet thick and stretch 174 feet (53 meters) underground.
Instead of simply setting up shop in the old living quarters provided for missile operators, Hall is building condos right up the missile shaft.
Seven of the 14 underground floors will be condo space selling for $2 million a floor or $1 million a half floor. Three and a half units have been sold, two contracts are pending and only two more full units are available, Hall said.
For now, metal stairs stretch down to connect each floor but an elevator will later replace them. The units are within a steel and concrete core inside the original thick concrete, which makes them better able to withstand earthquakes.
Hall is also installing an indoor farm to grow enough fish and vegetables to feed 70 people for as long as they need to stay inside and also stockpiling enough dry goods to feed them for five years.
The top floor and an outside building above it will be for elaborate security.
Other floors will be for a pool, a movie theater and a library, and when in lockdown mode there will be floors for a medical center and a school.
Complex life support systems provide energy supplies from sources of conventional power, as well as windmill power and generators.
Giant underground water tanks will hold water pre-filtered through carbon and sand. And, of course, an elaborate security system and staff will keep marauding hordes out.
The condo elevator will only operate if a person's fingerprint matches its system, Hall said. Cameras will monitor a barbed-wire topped fence and give plenty of warning of possible intruders. Responses can range from a warning to lethal force.
'If they try to climb the fence we can stun them,' he said. 'If they want to break into the system, we can put an end to that.'
Doomsday fears have flourished throughout history, but what once involved isolated pockets of fear now spreads worldwide through the media and Internet.
They have also expanded into the popular culture thanks to the success of dystopian fantasies like the Hunger Games and a National Geographic reality show about those preparing for doomsday.
'Fear sells even better than sex,' said John Hoopes, a professor in the anthropology department at the University of Kansas who has studied the spread of doomsday culture.
'Now the entire planet is involved and that's the result of the Internet,' he said.
'I think it's mostly a strategy for feeling less alone and helpless,' he said. 'People don't like to feel they're the only ones fearing the inevitable, which is each individual's personal death.'
Those who sign on to prepare for the worst, he said, fall into a salesman's strategy: 'Act now, or you're a loser.'
Hall says threats from nature and man are increasing and he wants to create a safe communal society where people survive chaos in comfort, with each person doing an assigned job and interacting with others.
A tombstone-shaped sign declaring 'This Old Missile Base' leads to a locked fence surrounding the construction site northwest of Salina. Hall insists the exact location be kept secret.
The fence slides open and Hall leads reporters or potential buyers past an opening in the ground to the metal stairs stretching down the silo.
'You can stand here and literally it's like a deprivation chamber - you can't hear anything,' Hall said pointing out the 10-foot high ceilings and a cave-like quiet.
He is working to finish an 1,800 square-foot (167 square-meter) unit for a wealthy businesswoman with two teen children.
Electronic screens will serve as windows, offering views of Paris, New York, a beach, a forest or whatever she decides to see.
The unit itself will have top-end appliances, walk-in closets in the bedrooms, a kitchen and dining area and two living rooms to avoid arguments about what to watch on TV.
So far he has spent $4 million on the entire silo, including $300,000 he paid for it in 2008, when it was flooded with water and locked by giant steel doors. He expects to have all the seven floors of condos sold by August.
Interested buyers have included an NFL player, a racing car driver, a movie producer and famous politicians, he said, but he now requires all the money up front.
Four people who put down $250,000 deposits could not come up with the rest and he returned the deposits, but the economy is getting better and global warming, strange weather and disasters are stoking fears.
The recent earthquakes in Mexico prompted several calls from potential buyers, he said, predicting more bad things will happen and more silos will be waiting.
About 70 Atlas-F silos were built and he has options on three more of them, he said.
'One is an entire silo for one individual, but I won't know that until his check clears the bank,' Hall said. - dailymail
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Did a German U-Boat Sink the Titanic?
Is it possible, just possible, that a German submarine, rather than an iceberg, sank the mighty Titanic?
When the sunken Titanic was discovered in 1985, its starboard side was embedded in sand. This was the side that had struck the iceberg off of Newfoundland 100 years ago on April 14,1912. So-called "subprofiler" digital images revealed that six rivets has popped off, suggesting that shoddy workmanship led to the ship's demise. But, this covered only a relatively small area of just 12 square feet, hardly enough to cause the huge luxury liner to sink with such rapidity.
Significantly, several survivors including both passengers and crew members, when questioned by a U.S. Senate inquiry panel, testified that they never felt any impact or heard any sound when the collision occurred, suggesting it was minor in nature. However, they reported having heard four "reports," or explosions, deep in the bowels of the Titanic AFTER it had scraped the iceberg! These could conceivably have been torpedoes launched by a German submarine.
Moreover, a number of survivors huddled in lifeboats observed a searchlight in the distance, encouraging them that a rescue vessel was approaching. This light had been attributed to the Californian. But, that ship's captain, Stanley Lord, insisted that it was not his, that there was another vessel between his and the Titanic. Indeed, his craft was mired in a colossal ice field and forced to remain there until daylight. Several sailors on watch asserted that they witnessed an unidentified vessel approximately 5 to 6 miles away until about 2 a.m., possibly a submarine that had surfaced to assess the damage it had caused, after which time it skulked off. For the record, this was not the Carpathia, which arrived on the scene later to assist in rescuing survivors.
Most assuredly, that mystery craft could well have been a German sub, as their U-boat technology was highly perfected by that time and their subs were scanning the North Atlantic then. The sub may have deliberately targeted the luxury liner or possibly accidentally collided with it. It should be noted that a German U-boat did indeed sink the famed Lusitania just three years later in 1915.
Will the Titanic ever be resurrected to assess the destruction and determine if this hypothesis could be viable? Probably not, as it took two years just to recover a relatively small 20-ton section from the 46,000-ton craft. which is in an extremely fragile state. It will most likely remain in place as a lasting memorial to the most dramatic oceanic tragedy on record. - THP
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Argentina Baby Alive After 12 Hours In Morgue
A mother in Argentina says she fell to her knees in shock after finding her baby alive in a coffin in the morgue nearly 12 hours after the girl had been declared dead.
Analia Bouter named her newborn Luz Milagros, or "Miracle Light." The tiny girl, born three months premature, was in critical but improving condition Wednesday in the same hospital where the staff pronounced her stillborn on April 3.
The case became public Tuesday when Rafael Sabatinelli, the deputy health minister in the northern province of Chaco, announced in a news conference that five medical professionals involved have been suspended pending an official investigation.
Bouter told the TeleNoticias TV channel in an interview Tuesday night that doctors gave her the death certificate just 20 minutes after the baby was born, and that she still hasn't received a birth certificate for her tiny girl.
Bouter said the baby was quickly put in a coffin and taken to the morgue's refrigeration room. Twelve hours passed before she and her husband were able to open the coffin to say their last goodbyes.
She said that's when the baby trembled. She thought it was her imagination – then she realized the little girl was alive and dropped to her knees on the morgue floor in shock.
A morgue worker quickly picked up the girl and confirmed she was alive. Then, Bouter's brother grabbed the baby and ran to the hospital's neonatal intensive care unit, shouting for the doctors. The baby was so cold, Bouter said, that "it was like carrying a bottle of ice."
A week later, the baby is improving. Bouter said she still has many unanswered questions about what happened. She said she had given birth normally to four other children and doesn't understand why doctors gave her general anesthesia this time. She said she also doesn't know why she wasn't allowed to see her baby before it was put into a coffin.
She said she had to insist on going to the morgue's refrigeration room, where she brought her sister's cellphone to take a picture of the newborn for the funeral. Her husband struggled to open the lid, and then stepped aside to let her see inside.
"I moved the coverings aside and saw the tiny hand, with all five fingers, and I touched her hand and then uncovered her face," she said in the TeleNoticias interview. "That's where I heard a tiny little cry. I told myself I was imagining it – it was my imagination. And then I stepped back and saw her waking up. It was as if she was saying `Mama, you came for me!'
"That was when I fell to my knees. My husband didn't know what to do. We were just crying and I laughed and cried, cries and laughter. We must have seemed crazy."
She says the family plans to sue the staff at Hospital Perrando in the city of Resistencia for malpractice, and still wants answers. But they've been focused for now on their little girl, whom she described as amazingly healthy despite being born after just 26 weeks of gestation. So far, she hasn't needed oxygen or other support commonly provided to preemies, she said.
"I'm a believer. All of this was a miracle from God," she told Telam, Argentina's state news agency. - THP
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Blue Lights over Lubbock, Texas
Sunny Williams at Lights in the Texas Sky has been investigating a series of reports the past week or so. If you live in the Lubbock, TX area and have more information, please use the link and contact Sunny.
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Faithful flock to see miracle 'self-cleaning' icons
Click for video
Hundreds of believers were lined up before the church of Sveti Dimitrije in Skopje, Macedonia to see icons that have started to shine without an apparent explanation.
"It is really a miracle, it started on Sunday in the central part of the iconostasis (a wall of icons and religious paintings), the golden colour is very visible and the phenomenon continues," Father Dimce Malinov said. According to the priest the icons and the frescoes in the Orthodox church started to shine as if they were being buffed by an invisible hand.
"Since this morning I have observed the phenomenon, half of the icons are already cleaned. First a red colour appears which turns golden. You can see the icons clearing up from top to bottom," Father Malinov said.
A journalist on the scene said that it did look like the icons were getting brighter as she observed them. Some 80 percent of the former Yugoslav republic's two million people are Orthodox Christians.
NOTE: the video is somewhat odd...the particles whizzing about don't look like regular dust. Lon
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