A secretive construction project on Kauai is being undertaken to create a compound for Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
Included in the plans for Koolau Ranch in Hawai'i are two mega-mansions, 11 treehouses connected by bridges, and a massive underground bunker, an investigation by Wired has revealed.
Plans obtained by the magazine showed designs for a 5,000-square-foot subterranean lair complete with an escape hatch and blast-proof doors.
A tunnel connecting the two huge mansions will also lead to the bunker.
The bunker could be entirely self-sufficient, with its own water supply and food grown on the 1,400-acre compound on the Hawaiian Island.
It has prompted speculation that Zuckerberg, creator of Facebook, could be prepping to wait out an apocalyptic scenario, a Doomsday survival preoccupation held by many tech billionaires.
As Douglas Rushkoff recounts in his book Survival of the Richest, procuring a secure bunker to wait our disaster is an obsession held by many super-wealthy people"Their extreme wealth and privilege served only to make them obsessed with insulating themselves from the very real and present danger of climate change, rising sea levels, mass migrations, global pandemics, nativist panic and resource depletion," wrote Rushkoff.
"For them, the future of technology is about only one thing: escape from the rest of us."
Earlier this year Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos bought two mansions for £61.4 million ($78 million) and £54 million ($69 million) on a manmade island in Florida nicknamed 'Billionaire Bunker'.
Zuckerberg, who is estimated by Bloomberg to have a net worth of $109 billion, has spent £212 million ($270 million) on acquiring the land and building the project, reported Wired. This includes a £12.6 million plot he purchased in 2021 through his Kaloko LLC.All the contractors are bound by strict NDAs (non-disclosure agreements) and the construction project has been kept top secret by the world’s 10th richest man.
Some residents of Kauai are unhappy about the project, which threatened the rights of kuleana descendants – a Hawaiian cultural term for people who have an ancestral responsibility to care for an area of land but may not have formal deeds to the plot.
Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, have donated over $20 million to local nonprofits since the
A 2020 petition demanding to ‘Stop mark Zuckerberg from Colonizing Kauai’ reached over 1 million signatures.
Hawaii was annexed by the US in 1898, and its people have struggled to regain sovereignty since. The explosion of the resort-based tourist industry on the islands has led to severe water shortages on many of the islands.
Other notable figures have received criticism for buying up large swathes of land on the islands to build luxury compounds.
Oprah Winfrey owns almost 2,000 acres on Maui, where she lives part time on an 11-bedroom ranch. The island was devastated by severe wildfires this year that were exacerbated by water shortages.
Former US President Barack Obama bought a beachfront property on Oahu for £6.8 million($8.7 million) to create a luxury compound, reportedly exploiting a legal loophole to keep a seawall that is understood to be contributing to coastal erosion.
