Mark Zuckerberg Downplays Hawaii ‘Doomsday Bunker’ as ‘Little Haven’

Mark Zuckerberg is downplaying the massive 5,000 square foot bunker beneath his Hawaiian compound that was revealed in WIRED last year and sparked conspiracy theories on social media about wealthy tech moguls building doomsday bunkers.

The billionaire Facebook co-founder hit back when Bloomberg reporter Emily Chang, in a video posted Tuesday chronicling his visit to Zuckerberg’s Lake Tahoe property, asked him what he was “worried about” — and if he knew something “we don’t know”. » about the bunker.

“No, I think it’s just a little shelter,” he told Chang. “It’s a basement!” It’s a basement.

Zuckerberg said the Kauai “base house” is widely used as storage space and that he works there frequently, but admitted there was an underground bunker there, calling it a “shelter from hurricanes or whatever.

“I think it’s been exaggerated, like the whole ranch is some kind of doomsday bunker, which is just not true,” he added.

Last February, Ron Hubbard, CEO of Atlas Survival Shelters, and Robert Vicino, founder of underground survival shelter company Vivos, spoke to The Hollywood Reporter about how news of Zuckerberg’s bunker increased their business.

Hubbard said it “caused a buying frenzy,” while Vicino said, “Now that Zuckerberg has let the cat out of the bag, other people who share his status or are close to his status are starting to thinking, ‘Oh my God, if he does that, maybe he knows something I don’t know, maybe I should look it up myself.’

Zuckerberg purchased the 1,400-acre estate, known as Koolau Ranch, in a series of transactions beginning in 2014, WIRED reported in 2023. According to planning documents for the property reviewed by the news outlet, the complex will have its own energy and food. supplies.

Construction of the complex and purchase of the land was estimated to cost approximately $270 million. Zuckerberg told Chang that he and his wife, Priscilla Chan, used the property for ranching and that he wanted to “create the highest quality beef in the world.”

Alongside Zuckerberg, Bill Gates is reportedly among other tech moguls with bunkers, with Vicino telling THR in 2016 that Gates “has huge bunkers under each of his houses.”

PayPal CEO Peter Thiel had similar plans for a bunker-like complex in New Zealand, but these were thwarted in 2022 after backlash from local conservationists, according to The Guardian.

Zuckerberg’s property has drawn similar criticism from Kauai residents and indigenous groups, with one former resort worker telling WIRED: “It’s crazy that a man who’s not from Hawaii would come here and buys a lot of land which prevents locals from (potentially purchasing) land. . But this is already happening.