Mark Zuckerberg is worth over $100 billion. What does the world’s sixth-richest person do with all that money, besides lighting lots of it on fire to try to bring a Ready Player One-style metaverse to life? Apparently, he builds a sprawling mansion complex with a massive underground bunker that sounds like a cross between Bioshock and Fallout.
That’s according to Wired, which recently published an investigation into the grandiose construction plans, local politics, and swirl of NDAs and secrecy underpinning the Meta founder and CEO’s “home” on the Hawaiian island of Kauai. The magazine describes a 1,400-acre compound with two mansions whose combined footprint is roughly the size of a football field. A network of 11 disk-shaped treehouses is planned nearby, while a separate facility will house a gym, pool, tennis court, and other luxuries.
What takes the project from eccentric billionaire paradise to video game villain level is the planned 5,000 square foot underground shelter connected to the mansions via a tunnel, complete with a blast door. “The door in the underground shelter will be constructed out of metal and filled in with concrete—a style common in bunkers and bomb shelters,” Wired reports. The compound also sports elevators, soundproof walls, secret entrances, and its own water tanks.
Brandi Hoffine Barr, Zuckerberg’s spokesperson, told Wired the tech billionaire, his wife Priscilla Chan, and their five kids view the Koolau Ranch as their home.
Even aside from the reported criticisms by local residents and the raft of NDAs allegedly signed by compound staff that discourage them from talking about people injured on the job, it doesn’t take long for the compound to conjure images straight out of a video game. The Koolau Ranch sounds like perfect fodder for a Hitman or Deus Ex level. Play it your way while searching for the secret algorithms controlling the flow of online information.
Or if this were a sequel to Horizon Forbidden West, maybe we’d finally clear the junk blocking the bunker entrance, power back up the ancient generator, and discover an entire society uploaded to the metaverse enjoying virtual life like the apocalypse never happened. I’m sure their legs would look glorious by that point.
