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From a $1 Shipping Container to Cheyenne Mountain: Touring Nuclear Bunkers at Every Price Point

MrBeast ミスタービースト · ▶ 17:08 · 13 min read
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Overview

MrBeast (Jimmy) and his friends tour a series of bunkers, each more expensive than the last. The question is how much protection, comfort and strangeness each price buys, from a $1 hole in the ground up to a facility Jimmy calls a "1 BILLION dollar" bunker 2,000 feet inside a mountain. He frames that final site as able to "survive the biggest atomic bombs ever made." The tour moves through a decommissioned missile site, a backyard workshop full of homemade weapons, a presidential shelter from 1961, a 15-story "underground skyscraper," a luxury bunker beneath a suburban house, and finally the Cheyenne Mountain Space Force Station. Along the way the group keeps testing what "safe" actually means.

13 min read

The $1 Bunker: A Buried Shipping Container

The tour starts at the bottom of the scale. Jimmy bangs on the hatch, says it "feels safe," and climbs in to find the inside wet. He offers a tour, then declares it over almost immediately, because the space is "basically a shipping container buried underground." It is also already bending, which he jokes explains why it was sold to him for a dollar. He says it looks like it has "already been through the explosion."

When he asks his friends whether it would survive a bomb, they answer flatly "No!" The group calls to "drop the bomb," and the video cuts to a large explosion. The segment sets the baseline that the more expensive bunkers are measured against: a buried box gives the feeling of shelter but little more.

The $1 Million Bunker: A Former Missile Command Center

Next is a $1 million bunker that Jimmy says was originally built "to shoot missiles and survive a nuclear apocalypse far underground." Getting in means going down a long series of stairs and pushing open a 7,000-pound door. The heart of the facility reminds Jimmy of Star Wars. He identifies one room as the place missiles would have been launched from, and explains that the whole site was designed to withstand a nuclear attack "and then respond."

The engineering detail he stresses most is that the floor they are standing on is suspended from the ceiling like a giant platform. In his description, eight springs are the only thing holding the group up. He finds it remarkable that about 50 years ago this was a missile command center. The current owner has since turned it into a hidden, fortified house "ready for the end of the world." Jimmy's reaction is to ask how the government let him buy it.

The converted space includes a bathtub, a kitchen and an entertainment area. Five stories down, at the lowest point, there is a club where the owner throws parties. The owner also takes the group to a part of the bunker he says he doesn't normally show anyone: the silo where a real nuclear missile was stored decades ago. When Karl wanders toward an edge, the owner confirms it isn't safe. When they turn the lights off, the silo goes completely dark, and the group calls it "really scary."

The $3 Million Backyard Bunker and Colin Furze's Inventions

To show what building a bunker yourself might look like, Jimmy visits a backyard where, under a "creepy shed," sits a bunker he values at $3 million. He attributes most of that value not to the structure but to the owner's collection of "insane and dangerous weapons." The owner is the YouTuber Colin Furze, whom Jimmy compares to a real-life Tony Stark.

Colin's inventions include a wrist-mounted rocket launcher, a machine gun with a chainsaw attached, and a fire-based device that alarms everyone, with Jimmy shouting that Colin is "gonna burn your bunker down." Jimmy concludes this would be "the worst bunker in the world to rob." The owner clearly likes digging holes: the property has an underground tunnel system, and one chamber is bigger than the first bunker space.

Colin also demonstrates a cannon that "turns anything into ammunition" and a device with a spinning belt of knives. Jimmy asks whether a knife has ever come off and then demands it be shut down. He sums up the tension of this stop: the point of a bunker is to protect you, but he "can't say I felt safe" once Colin started bringing these things out.

The $5 Million Presidential Bunker From 1961

The next stop is described as a $5 million "presidential bunker" on an island. It was built in 1961 for President John F. Kennedy. Jimmy's reaction on entering is disbelief at how basic it is. He asks why it smells like cat pee and whether JFK "only had this," calls it "kind of a dump" today, and laughs at the "presidential bathrooms."

He contrasts it with the billion-dollar bunker coming at the end of the video, noting that this one "is not very big." He jokes that JFK would be upset to see the other bunkers. The segment works as a reference point for what a top-level shelter looked like more than six decades ago.

The $30 Million "Underground Skyscraper"

Jimmy then moves "from the bunker of the past to the bunker of the future": a $30 million, 15-story bunker he describes as an underground skyscraper built for 75 people to survive "anything."

Security comes first. The entrance has armor-plated steel doors two feet thick. Asked how many RPGs it would take to blow through them, the host estimates "probably three." There is also a sniper's nest on the roof, 24-hour security, an armory that their guide Larry is especially fond of, and an indoor shooting range. Larry explains the reasoning plainly: "We aren't gonna let people steal our food." Jimmy concedes it may all be overkill, but asks who wouldn't want to live there if the world really ended.

The facility includes a hospital, an exam room, a dentist's office, a pharmacy, a jail, and fifteen luxury apartments. Jimmy recognizes the apartments: five years earlier the group filmed a video spending 24 hours in this same bunker. He says one of the apartments is nicer than most people's regular apartments, citing details like a washer and dryer. He jokes that they should buy one without telling Chandler.

For food, the bunker has its own grocery store, designed to make life feel normal and stocked with items like canned bacon. Larry also shows them a hydroponics room, which he calls one of the most important rooms in the bunker. Jimmy explains that hydroponics grows plants in water instead of dirt and would "essentially produce infinite food for the residents." Last is what he calls possibly "the most protected pool in the entire world." Counting the pool, the food supply, a gym and a rock wall, Jimmy judges this bunker "at least 20 times better" than everything they had seen so far, and says he doesn't know how it could get better.

The $50 Million Bunker Disguised as the Outdoors

The $50 million bunker sits about 30 feet beneath an ordinary-looking house in an ordinary neighborhood. The house upstairs is just a house, but a secret code opens an elevator. Jimmy asks for the code to be blurred so he won't get in trouble. The elevator descends three stories, slowly enough that he complains it "takes forever." On the way down, the group can see the stone and cement they are passing through.

The defining idea here, in Jimmy's description, is that the bunker is designed to look like you are not in one. There are palm trees, carpet that feels like grass, and windows showing trees. There is also a Christmas tree, still up five months after Christmas. He reasons that if you had to live underground for decades or "100 years," this is the bunker you would choose, because it feels like the outside world. Inside sits a full house within the bunker, much larger and fancier than he expected. Its low doorframes lead him to conclude the builder must be about five feet tall, which turns into a running joke with Tareq.

Some details undercut the luxury. Jimmy takes a Diet Coke, reasoning the owner of a $50 million bunker wouldn't mind, and then discovers it expired two years ago. His attempt to ask Google whether he's going to die fails because there is no signal three stories down.

The stop also ties back to an earlier video. Jimmy finds the room connected to a past challenge in which he trapped Hugo and Rayne in a bunker for 100 days for half a million dollars. He rings a signal and brings them down the elevator, predicting they'll be annoyed that this bunker is far nicer than the one he built for them. He admits as much to their faces. The pair quickly fall back into bickering. Rayne insists she would have cooked every night with a kitchen like this, and Hugo doubts it. Outside the underground house is a pool, which Hugo jumps into with his socks on. Jimmy's "only critique" is to ask how different their challenge would have been with a pool. The bunker also has a secret escape exit, which Jimmy isn't sure he's allowed to show.

The "$1 Billion" Bunker: Cheyenne Mountain Space Force Station

The final stop is the Cheyenne Mountain Space Force Station, which Jimmy calls "the most secure bunker on the planet." He says it is shielded by more than 2,000 feet of solid granite and can withstand "the most destructive weapons ever devised by mankind."

Access is tightly controlled. When Jimmy jokes about running down the entry tunnel, he is told that guards would shoot him. Where the video would normally show a 3D map of the layout, he says the site is so secret that the camera needs a lens cap, and that he "legally cannot show" such details from that point on. He also can't say how far they walked to reach the inner area, because that too is classified.

Past the guards is a massive nuclear-bomb-proof door, followed by a second one directly behind it. Their guide says that if a nuke went off outside while they stood there, "we would be good." Inside, the "welcome wall" displays the four commands that operate in the facility, and Jimmy notices that Space Force is among them. He also describes protection against "mother nature": a gap was carved between the mountain and the bunker, and the bunker was placed on springs. In his explanation, this lets the shockwave of a nuclear attack or an earthquake be absorbed. This echoes the spring-suspended floor at the $1 million missile site.

Inside the Battle Deck and the AJOC

The group is taken to the battle deck. Jimmy may film everything except what's on the right, which he jokes is "definitely not a UFO." He explains that this is where NORAD's leaders would make decisions to protect North America from airborne or maritime attack. Jimmy is allowed to sit in the General's seat on the condition that he touches nothing. Then Tareq appears to touch something on the console, which sets off a panic. After being told around 30 times not to touch anything, the group worries he'll get them kicked out or arrested. Tareq apologizes repeatedly.

Their guide, Eric, also shows them what Jimmy calls the secret command post at the heart of the bunker: the AJOC, or Alternate Joint Operation Center. Jimmy describes it as responsible for protecting the air and sea of the entire North American continent. Asked how long it takes for fighter jets to be tailing an unknown aircraft, the answer is "less than five minutes." Asked about UFOs, the response is a cough, a pause, an "uh, possibly?" and a change of subject. Jimmy reads it as an answer he isn't allowed to give.

Life Inside the Mountain

Filming permission stays narrow. At one point Jimmy celebrates finally being allowed to film a hallway before the lens cap goes back on. He says the number of people who work there is classified, but that the facility has everything needed to keep hundreds of people alive for years at a time. That includes a gym, an underground grocery store, and, to his surprise, a Subway, which staff confirm exists because so many people work there. There is also a fire station with fire trucks that drive on actual roads inside the mountain.

The group joins a rescue drill. Firefighters usually practice on dummies, but the crew volunteers one of their own. The attempt is chaotic: shouting that he's unconscious, a slap to the face, frantic CPR. The firefighter rates their performance "probably a four out of ten."

How the Bunkers Compare

Jimmy closes by ranking what he has seen. Some bunkers hide in backyards. With enough money, some hide under whole neighborhoods. Others are luxurious enough to have their own water park. But none compare, in his account, to an underground city with its own power grid, endless hallways, highways and multiple lakes. He suggests that this bunker could one day be "what defends North America and humanity."

The tour ends with the camera covered one last time. Jimmy asks the guide to say the U.S. military will hunt down viewers who don't subscribe. The answer is "Absolutely not."

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