The Billionaire Prepper Phenomenon: Should We Be Concerned?

Fri Oct 10 2025 23:05:17 GMT+0300 (Eastern European Summer Time)

An exploration into why tech billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg and Reid Hoffman are investing in underground shelters and apocalypse preparedness, and what it suggests about their views on future global events.

Tech giants are increasingly preparing for potential global catastrophes by investing in underground shelters and properties, raising questions about their foresight and public concerns regarding impending disasters. Figures like Mark Zuckerberg and Reid Hoffman reveal a culture of 'doom prepping' among the wealthy elite, pointing to fears about climate change, technology's rapid advancements, and the future of humanity. As discussions on artificial intelligence (AI) reach a fever pitch, the implications of such preparations are becoming more pronounced.

Mark Zuckerberg is said to have started work on Koolau Ranch, his sprawling 1,400-acre compound on the Hawaiian island of Kauai, as far back as 2014.

It is set to include a shelter, complete with its own energy and food supplies, though the carpenters and electricians working on the site were banned from talking about it by non-disclosure agreements, according to a report by Wired magazine.

A six-foot wall blocked the project from view of a nearby road.

Asked last year if he was creating a doomsday bunker, the Facebook founder gave a flat 'no'. The underground space spanning some 5,000 square feet is, he explained, 'just like a little shelter, it's like a basement.'

That hasn't stopped the speculation - likewise about his decision to buy 11 properties in the Crescent Park neighbourhood of Palo Alto in California, apparently adding a 7,000 square feet underground space beneath.

Though his building permits refer to basements, according to the New York Times, some of his neighbours call it a bunker. Or a billionaire's bat cave.

Then there is the speculation around other tech leaders, some of whom appear to have been busy buying up chunks of land with underground spaces, ripe for conversion into multi-million pound luxury bunkers.

Reid Hoffman, the co-founder of LinkedIn, has talked about 'apocalypse insurance'. This is something about half of the super-wealthy have, he has previously claimed, with New Zealand a popular destination for homes.

So, could they really be preparing for war, the effects of climate change, or some other catastrophic event the rest of us have yet to know about?

In the last few years, the advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) has only added to that list of potential existential woes. Many are deeply worried at the sheer speed of the progression.

Ilya Sutskever, chief scientist and a co-founder of Open AI, is reported to be one of them.

By mid-2023, the San Francisco-based firm had released ChatGPT - the chatbot now used by hundreds of millions of people across the world - and they were working fast on updates.

But by that summer, Mr Sutskever was becoming increasingly convinced that computer scientists were on the brink of developing artificial general intelligence (AGI) - the point at which machines match human intelligence - according to a book by journalist Karen Hao.

In a meeting, Mr Sutskever suggested to colleagues that they should dig an underground shelter for the company's top scientists before such a powerful technology was released on the world, Ms Hao reports.

As concerns about AGI grow, so do the preparations among those who might be most affected by it. Elon Musk has even claimed that super-intelligent AI could usher in an era of 'universal high income'. He recently endorsed the idea that AI will become so cheap and widespread that virtually anyone will want their 'own personal R2-D2 and C-3PO'.

On the flip side, there are worries that the technology could weaponized or that it may lead to severe consequences for humanity itself.