Sawt Falasteen - With Middle East in flames, Texan bunker maker sees business boom

Foreign and US clients are rushing to buy his bunkers, seeking refuge in case of air raids, nuclear fallout or apocalypse.

With the United States and Israel pounding Iran, and Tehran retaliating with strikes across the region, Hubbard has seen demand for his product soar, mostly from Gulf nation clients in Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates.

"You can imagine how many people are thinking 'I wish I had a bomb shelter,'" Hubbard, 63, told AFP in the office of his company, Atlas Survival Shelters. "The respect and the demand for the product is really at an all-time high right now like I've never seen it before."

But with Iranian missiles hitting US targets in the Middle East and violence on the rise domestically, Americans are also worried. One recent morning, a client from Florida called Hubbard to inquire about a bomb shelter for 10 people.

- How It Works -

A basic backyard bunker housing four people underground for up to a week while shielding them from bomb blasts and radiation costs around $25,000.

More sophisticated models, designed for years-long stays, can cost millions of dollars depending on how much food, energy and water they are stocked with.

"It depends if they're preparing for the end of the world or Armageddon or they're preparing just basically for a barrage of missile fires as mostly the Israelis have," Hubbard said.

His bunkers can be built from concrete directly on-site, or fabricated from metal at his facility in the town of Sulphur Springs in rural Texas, and then transported to the client.

A nuclear shelter only needs to be three feet deep because "it's the earth and the concrete on top of you shielding you from the gamma radiation," Hubbard explained, adding that he usually tries to build them six to ten feet underground to allow for protection from artillery fire.

The shelters feature a main door that seals hermetically and a decontamination chamber where people can shower if they have been in a contaminated environment.

Depending on the budget, the interior can resemble a small apartment, with a living room and TV, a bedroom, a kitchen, a laundry area and a bathroom. Some models even include a weapons storage room.

The facility connects to a power source and can store and filter water. If electricity fails, the bunker's ventilation system can be operated manually using a hand crank — much like in vintage cars.

- 'Crazy Americans getting bomb shelters' -

In Hubbard's factory yard, about twenty bunkers that look like steel shipping containers stood ready to be shipped to clients across the country. Another 40 orders were in production.

"I expect to see my sales surpass probably the previous three years in the next two months," Hubbard said. "But it will take me two to three years to probably produce all the shelters that I will sell over the next two months."

Atlas also licenses its technology to companies abroad and sends a team of specialists from the United States to supervise the construction work.

While Hubbard keeps his client list confidential, some high-profile buyers, such as misogynist influencer Andrew Tate and YouTuber and philanthropist MrBeast, have publicly acknowledged purchasing his bunkers.

In 2021, he took part in a TV show featuring socialite and entrepreneur Kim Kardashian, where he built a bunker for her California home. And, according to Hubbard, tech titan Mark Zuckerberg also commissioned a bunker design from him, which was then assembled by a local contractor.

"To those who say 'crazy Americans getting bomb shelters,' they're not saying that anymore because they're seeing that a country like Dubai is being bombed religiously every single day," Hubbard said, adding "especially with the future of the globe looking very bad."

M.AlAhmad--SF-PST