Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is building a bunker in Hawaii, with additional retreats in Palo Alto and Lake Tahoe.

Elon Musk is preparing a vast compound in Texas.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman maintains a bunker at an undisclosed location, as does Jeff Bezos.

For those who fear the world is speeding toward apocalypse, it may be of little comfort that the great tech billionaires are securing survival in fortified shelters costing them only a fraction of their fortunes.

These bunkers are powered by solar energy, equipped with air and water purification systems, hydroponic farms to grow vegetables without soil, full medical facilities, and of course the luxuries expected for billionaires in seclusion: gyms, swimming pools, cinemas, and all necessary amenities to live underground for very long periods.

This raises profound moral questions, but if there is one issue that the small and exclusive club—already nicknamed the “Broligarchy” (a mix of Bros and Oligarchy)—does not appear to worry about, it is morality.

Zuckerberg stands above all, having spent the past decade in a real estate arms race that even other billionaires find excessive.

It began in Crescent Park, a wealthy Palo Alto neighborhood of lawyers and Stanford professors—but not billionaires.

Zuckerberg moved there 14 years ago and turned his neighbors’ lives into what one called “Monopoly from hell.” To date, he has spent more than 110 million dollars to acquire at least 11 homes in the neighborhood.

Some now stand completely empty.

“He conquered our neighborhood,” said resident Michael Kishnik, whose home is surrounded on three sides by Zuckerberg’s properties.

At first, the neighbors were unfazed.

Palo Alto is used to famous residents—Steve Jobs once lived there quietly.

That changed when Zuckerberg began acquiring more homes.

In 2012 and 2013 he spent over 40 million dollars on four additional houses, creating an L-shaped block around his first home.

Since 2022, he has purchased six more properties, four of them in just the past 15 months.

According to investigations, these acquisitions were handled quietly through limited liability companies, each under a different nature-themed name such as Pine Burrow or Seed Breeze, with sellers often required to sign nondisclosure agreements.

Zuckerberg has reportedly merged five of the houses into a massive estate with a main home for his family—his wife Priscilla Chan and their three daughters—plus guesthouses, lush gardens, a pickleball court, and a pool with a moving floor.

Guests at his barbecues are greeted by a two-meter statue of Priscilla in a silver robe.

The estate is shielded by tall hedges, with one vacant property used for entertainment and parties, and another operating in recent years as a private school for 14 children, despite city restrictions against such use.

In 2016, Zuckerberg requested permission to demolish four houses adjacent to his primary residence and rebuild them smaller but with “large basements.” City officials approved, and he added 650 square meters of underground space, officially designated as “basements” but referred to by neighbors as “bunkers.” The project caused eight years of heavy construction, filling the streets with machinery and noise.

He also introduced intense surveillance to the area, installing cameras pointed at neighbors, employing private security teams parked on the streets, filming passersby, and occasionally questioning people walking on public sidewalks.

Zuckerberg is now constructing another compound on the shores of Lake Tahoe and recently paid 23 million dollars in cash for a Washington D.C. mansion.

Yet his most serious bunker is rising on the Hawaiian island of Kauai, one of the most beautiful and coveted spots in the Pacific, known from the filming of Indiana Jones and Jurassic Park.

There, he owns 2.3 square kilometers—three times the size of New York’s Central Park—where he is building two mansions, treehouses connected by rope bridges, and an underground shelter.

Hawaii’s isolation and self-sufficiency make it a prime destination for billionaires imagining a burning world, and Zuckerberg appears to have been the first to act.

He arrived in 2014 with a checkbook, and what began as a modest land deal grew into a vast private empire.

His secluded estate, known as Ko’olau Ranch, stretches from mountain ridge to ocean and is now valued at around 300 million dollars.

While Zuckerberg is far ahead, he is not alone.

Sam Altman said last month in a podcast interview that he has “a heavily fortified underground structure, though I wouldn’t call it a bunker.” Whether or not he chooses that word, it is a bunker.

Its location is undisclosed, though speculation centers on California.

Altman was quick to downplay AI’s role in any coming apocalypse, saying he was considering another shelter “not because of AI, but because we are back in times when people are dropping bombs again.”

Jeff Bezos also owns multiple properties, at least three of them in Florida, a region vulnerable to climate change, all of them highly secluded.

For now, Bezos appears more occupied with opulent displays—such as a lavish wedding in Venice and sending his wife to space—than with burrowing underground.

And then there is Elon Musk, who last year completed a four-square-kilometer compound outside Austin, Texas, at a cost of about 35 million dollars.

Musk has reportedly envisioned his 12 known children living in nearby properties.

Behind his villa sits a six-bedroom mansion, and not far away he owns another estate.

In short: three estates, three mothers, 12 children, the richest man in the world with unlimited power, and in his free time, a man offering women his genetic material.

All in all, relatively ordinary.

Musk seems less invested than Zuckerberg in bunkers for doomsday.

When that day arrives, he is expected to take his dozens of offspring to Mars.

The rest will be left to cope here on Earth.