In Texas, a high-end housing community designed for doomsday

[brooklynite]

Curbed:

In many ways, Trident Lakes, a new, 700-acre planned community an hour north of Dallas, has the same splashy features of other new developments. Future residents can play golf, stroll amidst a trio of crystal-clear lagoons, and enjoy shopping and spa services just a few minutes from their new homes. While the project’s 50-foot tall statue of the Greek god Poseidon, which will be visible from the highway, is eye-catching, the difference between this project and typical high-end suburban sprawl is an unprecedented focus on security.

Built for more than 1,000 residents, the community is set behind 12-foot walls and watchtowers, will be guarded by a private security force, provide access to emergency underground bunkers, and can function self-sufficiently in case of a national emergency or nuclear attack. Eventually, planners want to add a private airstrip.

“The unique thing about Trident Lakes is that unlike other prepper-type properties, this is going to be a sustainable community that for all appearances, looks like a 5-star resort,” says communications director Richie Whitt. “This is not first-come, first-served. People will be turned away from Trident Lakes. We’ll hand-pick a community best-equipped to survive.”


Designed to withstand doomsday, this under-construction community in Texas, estimated to cost $320 million when complete, is the latest example of selling extreme security features as the ultimate high-end amenity. The desire for safe rooms and bunkers has created a cottage industry for experienced construction and security professionals, but Trident Lakes, which bills itself as an “ultimate safe haven” that provides “luxury life assistance,” takes things a step further.

Apparently, you need an "invitation" just to enquire about buying in...

[Vinca]

1. They'd better get their construction completed fast.

The Manbaby will probably nuke North Korea in his first 100 days causing China to nuke us.

[Hoyt]

2. Just where I'd want to live -- in a gated community with a bunch of preppers, gun nuts, paranoid

white wingers, and worse.

[pinboy3niner]

3. Meet your HOA president, Negan, and his partner Lucille

[dionysus]

5. LOL

[Coventina]

9. *giggle*

Not a fan of TWD, but made me laugh!

[TygrBright]

4. The predator class is getting nervous. n/t

[haele]

6. LOL...."Ultimate safe haven" my ass. The a-holes who are interested and can afford such a compound

Are typically sociopaths who want everyone else to bow down to them. They may be able to bully their families, but a community of such egotistical petty bourgeois that still has access to their money and the modern world is doomed for failure. Are they going to take turns being in charge?

Except for a few religious compounds and "The Farm", I don't know of any compound/commune type that didn't implode within four years. And even then, most religious compounds are pretty isolated and grim - they have to be to survive.

Anyway, who's going to do all the work? Vetted "Servants" from the outside living in company housing and using the company store, willing to live out their lives in a marginal existence on the whims of the Masters? Willing to sell the bodies and minds of their families, their children to live in security from the outside world with their Overlords?

That was always the point of failure with any "Galt's Gulch" fantasy. It always supposes two classes of people - the owners and the servants.
Ms. "Rand" consistently made an error in logic called her rentier/owners "makers" and the laborers "takers", the reality is the other way around - labor makes, and owners take.

On edit - once they do close up their gates, I'll bet eight months before there's rich man gang warfare going on inside. Along with a crapload of theft from the people they hired to do all the work.

Haele

[SecularMotion]

7. Those gates can be locked from the outside as well.

[Coventina]

8. Ummmmmm, do they have a farm? Livestock?

A hospital?

A way to generate enough electricity if the grid goes out?

Otherwise, I call shenanigans on their so-called "self-sufficiency."

[dbackjon]

10. Will it survive Zombies?

[pinboy3niner]

11. Depends on the Time of the Season. nt

[Quackers]

12. Sounds like Fallout, the video game series. nt

[denbot]

14. If the gate opens for a wanderer to find a "water chip" (The motivation for Fallout 1)

Break out the BBQ sauce!

[TheBlackAdder]

13. Just like the new wealthy communities being built in Africa, Middle East and India, their own prison

.


They have devolved society so much, they must intern themselves in a prison.

Granted, it's a plush prison, but still a prison.


.

[politicat]

15. Lovely. Franchise Oriented Quasi National Entity and a likely Phyle. Boers, not Vickies.

When Neal Stephenson goes from fiction to prediction, we're in trouble.

Thanks for clumping together, though. What can be used to keep something out... can also be used to keep something in.