Hunting the One Percent’s Doomsday Bunkers in New Zealand

[Music] what is this like the eighth or ninth millionaire billionaire we've had changed their mind last minute it's pretty frustrating but understandable I guess my name is bez McDonald I'm a journalist who grew up not too far from here in central Southland during my childhood one of my obsessions was post apocalyptic fiction in particular this book by nibble chute called on the beach he theorized that in a nuclear holocaust scenario New Zealand my home would be one of the only places to survive in the last year reports been coming out of America discussing New Zealand as a bolt hole in case of catastrophe a New Yorker article said that in Silicon Valley circles talking about buying a house in New Zealand as shorthand for apocalypse insurance in the wake of this bloomberg reported that ticks and company rising is shipped several thousand square foot deluxe survival bunkers to New Zealand units they say could be buried in secret and are only locatable with the GPS coordinate that's why we're here in Queenstown over the past two decades this town and its surrounding regions have become a haven for the rich and powerful to paint a picture of what that looks like the airport behind me routinely runs out of space for private jets this is a town where Peter teal and many other financial Giants have their boat holes if they've built survival bunkers here we're gonna see if we can find one [Music] welcome to the rise enos company located about an hour east of Dallas in merchants in Texas rise eNOS is the nation's biggest and best builder of above ground and below ground all steel shelters and luxury bunkers we are in the business of protecting people and saving lives great see right can you tell me a bit about how many bunkers and what kind of bunkers there are in New Zealand I guess nobody knows the true answer to how many bunkers Josie what sort of catastrophes are they designed to withstand from the outside elements you know nearby neighborhood they could protect you from any type of weather event or nuclear war when you speak to those clients who are wanting a survival bunker here today talk about any specific concerns if your neighborhoods children and it's children are hungry he's gonna do whatever it takes if that means killing you stealing from you whatever it takes he's gonna do whatever he needs to do to feed his family does it worry you that these people who are so informed are preparing so so rapidly for something coming it used to it used to worry me if you knew some of the people that owned shelters as well as people that own children's in New Zealand it would make you scratch your head and start asking yourself what do they know that though yeah worries me that Peter teal has a bunker oh this is a stern face let's say I was skeptical is there any way that I could see one of your bunkers in New Zealand no if you bought a marker for me the last thing I'm gonna do is ask you to show someone else's bugger right that would give me a very bad indeed I kiss a word thanks so much mate there's a chance these 38 bunkers here but there's also a chance that's you know he's talking it out maybe there's only eight or nine bunkers here and it just has better business sense to say there's 38 of them there could be zero there could very well be none if we were going to track one of these things down he said that 90% of the people installing bunkers here are from overseas so who we really need to talk to next to someone kind of tapped into their international crowd Trey Ratcliff is a world renowned photographer who moved to Queens town with his family six years ago some of his unique prints have sold for over a million dollars many to Silicon Valley types so he might have a good sense of what they're thinking so people are upset that Peter Thiel got a citizenship in 12 days do you think it's fear that people like him should be able to buy their citizenship in New Zealand if New Zealand is full of bright clever wealthy people it's good for New Zealand governments could do something more innovative than they're doing they could have like a subscription to the passport where every year you pay five or ten million dollars and the people that want to move here they can pay a lot of extra money for New Zealand and New Zealand starts to be filled up with smart clever people do you think that it might run amuck if people start using their money and influence to to run things the way they want them no I don't think so I don't think that rich people would come here break all the rules I think that's an unfounded fear I think that people just want to come here and have a good life and contribute and be good citizens having worked with some of these guys in Silicon Valley do you think they have cools to be worried I think it's a concern a lot of them have because you know they're clever and they're hyper involved with social networks they kind of see the way the world is going and I think it's probably a valid concern like no one's sure what's gonna happen and I think that when they do put on their pessimistic hat I think maybe maybe I should have a back-up plan do you think then that the follow up reports saying that survival bunkers are being here are also accurate I have no idea I don't know I think if you're wealthy enough and you're gonna get a place here and if you want to have a bunker then why one in chief Nick stop our trek down Roger Tompkins a queenstown local who runs a boutique tourist agency called Iron Man and New Zealand that specializes in providing exclusive experiences for wealthy visitors what's one of the most memorable experiences you've taken a client on or maybe one of the most specific experiences that clients asked for well museum is a very amiable place you know we're still very open and we're still very receptive for the most part even in Queenstown and I did have a crime day out here who had his family here and was caught on a conference call forum for a whole day it was a beautiful blueSky day after ski field so the deal I have with most of my suppliers is they know that my clients have certain requirements mm-hmm and also have pockets deep enough to be able to pay for those requirements so I rang the ski field manager at 22:4 and said I'd like to keep the field open for my client until half-past five and although there was a little bit of science on the end of the phone and he said yes that'll be fine and I popped down to the office with my American Express card I sorted everything out at half-past five and had a very very happy client money kind of buys you your own set of rules as money but as you know best cost money buys you a set of rules how long have you been in Queenstown ROG 35 years on and off now how have you seen in those past 35 years Queenstown change well I mean it's addictive I mean anyone who comes here he goes this is like this is like Wonderland where do you get this kind of isolation in these kind of views from up here it's really easy to see the rapid expansion and development taking place in Queenstown everywhere you look in Queenstown there's some kind of construction going on whether it be a small site like this one are huge sub developments away from the city itself but it's hard to look at any of them and imagine a survival bunker underneath it so we took a drive to look at some of the more exclusive properties outside the town centre so we're just east of Queenstown at the moment on the lake shore of lake Hayes and they called this the Golden Mile because all of these houses with a view of the lake had probably upwards of five million dollars they're all gorgeous houses but I'd say a lot of them are empty most the year so around here there's lots of spectacular properties and private estates but interestingly there is a property owned by a man called Tony Malkin who's one of the part owners of the Empire State Building and he has an incredible piece of property where he's building several buildings on which are designed to be subterranean so we tried to get access to this property and Tony Malkin said no but there's a mountain nearby and we're gonna climb it and see if we can actually see into this day [Music] so here he's so mountainous that even if you climb a mountain there's still gonna be a mountain blocking the thing that you want to see [Music] with our drone we could see a huge building being constructed deep below ground level could this include one of the rising yeast bunkers maybe but we couldn't tell from this distance so we keep looking so we're just driving around the hills beside Queenstown where there's a lot of incredible properties I'm looking for one in particular and that's the house that Peter Thiel bought a couple of years ago I know it's somewhere around here well I think I think this is it here yeah this is definitely it this is Peter Cheers house in Queenstown the local thick named at the plasma screen when the last guy built it it may not be a survival bunker but we know that in 2015 when there was a fire there they put a panic room in so he's here for something I we were looking for Peter Peter teal we were to lose the plasma screen it's hard to tell from this there's Peter in Queenstown at the moment he's not we understand them but again God God loves a try yeah so Peter tear wasn't home but that's hardly surprising considering he got a citizenship in 12 days when the official rules say that you have to be in the country a minimum of 1300 I mean Peter Thiel is worth over two billion dollars he was a founder of PayPal in an early investor in facebook he said one of his biggest influences was a book called the sovereign individual the book describes a world where everything is commercialized and privatized including citizenship so maybe we're closer to that future than we think so obviously it would have been nice to get into Peter Till's property but I think there's pretty much zero chance of that happening so we're gonna meet up with this guy oli wool who works with his dad Graham wall Graham actually sold Peter Thiel all those properties in New Zealand so all he's gonna show us one of these high-end properties and hopefully we can see if there's a bunker Wow so how much would a health like this cost so this one we expect around 10 million dollars for and although that's a lot of money we've we've sold you know many more than that as far as deals we have done that it's so bad in the middle are they coming in and saying hey I'm gonna pay cash for this building right now or are they saying look I've got this holding company can you please do your business through them and my experience which is unusual the the more valuable the property the smoother the transaction these these people are used to dealing with large sums of money have you ever sold a house in New Zealand that has a survival bunker in it not a survival bunker as such I saw one house that had the stairs that actually come up so you walk into an atrium like this open the front doors got this beautiful staircase that comes down apparently there's a button and the stairs can come up I've sold plenty of houses with great big wine cellars and and I guess if something absolutely crazy happened it would be a good good place to be it's where you reckon that goes like a button somewhere it might be to Bond disc to have like combination of keys on the piano although these ones are discolored [Music] it's an incredible house but I don't think that there's a survival banker here so let's say I did buy this house yeah and I wanted to install one welcome to yeah and I wanted to install one of these bunkers underneath there will be some consent process yeah I mean even to build a wing on a house as a nightmare to get through council everyone's talking about it all the time but secondly anyone would know that that's there you can go and get a property report on any any house in New Zealand you could do it to my property and know absolutely everything about it so almost impossible to kind of you know slip that under the radar if you need consents to barrier bunker we decided to talk to the people who deal with the paperwork hey Quinn hey do mate it's so good to meet you I wasn't and I wasn't quite expecting my Queenstown I'm a paranoid billionaire and I want to install a survival bunker in Queenstown what would I have to do through the District Council to make that legal first that you're gonna need to get a building consent right going in a building consent you need to get a builder go to get a man to help you out fill these documents out I've got here is a 17 page checklist slab all the mud floor the top floor roof and ceiling framing whole Kenton caboodle got insulation checklists an application for an on-site water disposal system so it's just a building consent stuff so once a it's done then you've got to go through the building part there's all the inspections at every stage before we can move on to the next part and then there's a big final inspection so if there was a bunker in Queenstown that'll be all this paperwork was legal in the past ten years as their paperwork for anything like this there's nothing is there like a specification that you would have first structure of that kind or like if someone wants to build a wine cellar and designs it to look like a wine cellar but really the retrofitting it for a survival scenario would there be any way to see that in the way that putting consents yeah well I mean most wine cellars won't have toilet some showers and right kit sort of carry-on that leaves the only option for a banker install in queenstown the last ten years to be unconsented and hints illegal right yeah would be yeah do you know of any [Music] we're here in wanaka in Central Otago and behind me is the property that Peter Thiel bought in 2015 now he hasn't submitted any consents to build a survival bunker here but he's Peter teal he's an outspoken libertarian he's been reported many times as being opposed to pretty much any form of regulation and I mean it kind of fulfills the whole point of a survival bunker if you have to put in paperwork and tell the council and then the public has a way of knowing then it removes the whole point of having a safe place that you can get to without anyone else knowing take she put something underground wouldn't be a problem for a structural point of view if we met the requirements of the New Zealand Building Code let's say you didn't want the paper trail of consents do you think you could bury it without the council knowing the quarries you'd say well Jesus the area is pretty vast there's some pretty open spaces with not many people about so there's a little strange to live in a city where most of the houses you look at it probably empty most of the year that's probably the most disappointing thing it we've got a like shortage of housing and then there's a lot of empty houses you can talk about all the built environment and all that but it's actually the people that actually make a community the UM the way it is [Music] all of this wealth is pouring into Queenstown do you think it's trickling down if you're talking about offshore investors buying boltholes here then no that wealth isn't trickling down into the lower levels by any means what is the affordable housing situation like in Queenstown well there's a real lack of affordable housing and Queenstown not just houses to buy but also rental properties what does the effect then on the people of Queenstown are people really struggling here it's actually huge and we'd say mentally emotionally they're suffering from depression they're suffering from being overwhelmed because they can't make ends meet each week I've had in the last probably two months about three locals we're talking 28 to 30 years that have just picked up and left it's really hard on the bones of the community with the people that actually live and work here the ones that are actually making everyone's coffees that are following people's cars that are all of it because they've got no way to live they can't afford to live here and so we're gonna lose all of that we and all these teachers we're gonna lose the police we have all those sort of people having to move out of town because there's nowhere affordable for them to eat what about when you hear about people like Peter Thiel who spent 12 days in New Zealand and got given his citizenship you know he can now call this country this town home as much as anyone else how do you feel about that well it's quite interesting when you know we've got friends that spent 12 years here and I've only just got their residency so I sit there I think I Hey so Trey just messaged me and said that he wants to show us what people think of is a bunker in Queenstown which is cool but it's interesting that some people were coming here thinking about the end of the world and yet some others who actually live here just thinking about getting through the rest of the week this is the Hills Golf Course near our town ironically the clubhouse is known to members is the bunker Trey Ratcliff wants to meet me here because he had remembered a time where he found himself inside an actual survival bunker here in Queenstown I have a art collector who's bought a bunch of my pieces and we got to be pretty good friends he really trusted me and so one day goes Trey come on over so I came over to his place because I need you to help me with something and suddenly I was helping him carry a ton of gold bricks down into his bunker are you sure yeah I was like man this guy really trusts me gold bricks yeah did it kind of look like it was setup to survive in they could close the door and sort of live down there yeah I think I think he could live down there did he seem like that that's what he was preparing to do I don't know we didn't talk too much about it I was just kind of looking around and amazed I wouldn't spend a lot of bunk or combo time I just kind of helped him carry that stuff and then we went off and got a wine just a normal Saturday in Queenstown yeah as much as I tried trade just wouldn't review weird the bunker walls or who owned it so we were leaf Nick at square one still trying to get a look inside the properties of the wealthy and powerful something something we're really interested in for this piece is buildings with subterranean spaces in them and we'd heard that there's a great subterranean space in this property I've not had to do this bugs me regarding guma fridge it's not enough control on the message it's just a shitty time of year and we're all flat out and bacon quince on next Monday night around January 2nd it means off is what it means what is this like the 8th or 9th millionaire billionaire we've had changed their mind last minute and it's pretty frustrating but understandable I guess it seemed like we'd hit a dead end nobody wanted to talk to us let alone show us around their houses the wealthy foreigners who are buying in queenstown seem inaccessible hidden behind companies are representatives and usually living somewhere else entirely but with their money and influence their changing Queenstown in ways that seem to be hurting normal people on regular wages it made me wonder how safe New Zealand really is from the problems of the world [Music] so after all that drama I just got texted the code to the Gator wearing a preserve so I don't actually think we'll be able to get into the house the 33 million dollar property we hope to get into but we could actually get into the gated community and at least have a look around so we're on our way to Wayne to preserve which is an exclusive gated community an hour north of Queenstown one of the houses there cost thirty three million dollars which is the third most expensive piece of residential real estate in New Zealand history whether or not there's a bunker here this is the pinnacle of how the global elite live in New Zealand it's remote its exclusive and it's very very expensive there may not be a bunker but these are definitely the bunker people okay this is a gatehouse but we've got a code so I'm just gonna plug the code in real quick and we're gonna go in access granted there are 33 different properties on this vast private estate overlooking Lake Wakatipu as we drove around the most striking thing we noticed is there apart from tradespeople there was nobody at home in any of these houses it was kind of strange to see these huge mansions and the stunning spot all sitting completely empty oh there's a digger over there what is this going to be eventually this is going to be a lodge yeah owned by an American family basically we're standing on the house pad right now and then out from those those pigs out there is a big lawn with a big ole or a barbecue area and over to our right is a helipad so at the back here which is a garage big big garage we have to go down about eight meters right and then the builders will come in and do the the concrete pad a retaining wall and then we put all the earth and that back over the top so it all looks natural also the gauge is going to sort of be covered over big man cave taking big bunker big survival bump okay well no this is this is down in here there's a big basement under the house which will contain a spar and sauna and plunge pool and all so you think the survival bunker is down the air oh I don't know where there's a survival bang bunker I think the Americans coming out here because it's a safe place to live I mean if I was in a country that was in jeopardy and something could possibly happen I'd want somewhere that I could get out and get to what if they bring their dippity here well that's lost you know I don't know I don't think that'll happen okay so look here you'd say this is a garage right then what the is this [Laughter] buried deep beneath the hill if your plan said that this was a garage there's all kinds of permits which say you can have little kitchenettes and running water to hose down your Karen all those sorts of things so like you wouldn't need permits or consents for a bunker because this is a garage but it's not it's not a you know I don't know if rising years are telling the truth about burying 38 bunkers here but what we have found is that the global elite are coming here and they do seem to be preparing for something they're not preparing for the science fiction apocalypse that I read about as a kid they seem to be preparing for some kind of financial collapse where rich individuals could end up more powerful than governments and in that future you don't need some steel box that you bury under the ground what you need is somewhere safe far from the rest of the world with a clean livable environment and perhaps with a government small enough where anything is available for the right price maybe even citizenship I wonder if that places New Zealand [Music] [Music] you

Channel: VICE

Views: 2,472,876

Rating: 4.1259689 out of 5

Keywords: documentary, wealth, NEW ZEALAND, bunkers, Real Estate, conspiracy theory, conspiracy, Bunker, PayPal, Doomsday, Zealandia, Queenstown, Peter Thiel, Pacific Rim, vice, journalism, videos, culture, interview, film, movies, underground, vice videos, lifestyle, independent, vice guide, exclusive, vice mag, vice magazine, vice.com, world, documentaries, short films, docs, yt:cc=on, peter theil, peter thiel, apocalypse preppers, preppers, 1%, survival bunkers

Id: Dh1JZVjKUAo

Length: 28min 10sec (1690 seconds)

Published: Sat May 04 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/RobDickinson]

Videos : 1
Bunkers : 0

[u/ElAsko]

So the first thing to do in an apocalypse scenario is to go and put thumbscrews on every digger driver in queenstown?

[u/LiberalKiwi]

In an actual 'doomsday' scenario we'd all gang up and invade their bunker.

[u/Gyn_Nag]

If they aren't given the right to live or purchase land in NZ, then they can't build their stupid fucking paranoia white elephant in NZ.

I prefer the NZ I grew up in: a calm and reserved land of farms and national parks, not an obnoxious and paranoid American billionaire's retreat.

[u/Basketballcapslock]

wouldn’t be surprised if we get harmed cause the world’s elite is here and they know that. Prior to that we would have been unnoticed.

[u/knockoneover]

I wonder if they have and will hand in any now illegal firearms. There's no point in having a secret zombie bunker without guns imho.

[u/The_Majestic_]

I wonder how well these bunkers will hold up to Earthquakes.

[u/niamhysticks]

He's like a hip Kiwi Dara Ó Briain!

[u/Berserker_Punk]

There was another discussion about the 1% bunkers on this subreddit before.

Someone pointed out that the bunkers have to have an air circulation feature or vents which can be clogged or messed with to suffocate everyone inside.