You can say that, as a Donald Trump adviser, Elon Musk has a front-row seat to the way the U.S. government is now being run and, by extension, how global affairs should unfold. Is the situation now so dire that he is possibly building a fallout shelter somewhere in the SpaceX parking lot?
Boring A Hole
As you probably know, Musk created quite a stir in December after he declared that he wants to create a boring company that will dig an underground tunnel that he could use to avoid traffic. That vision was promptly announced at Twitter while the Tesla CEO was enduring a massive traffic jam in Los Angeles.
He followed through on the tunnel proposal with announcement Jan. 25 that his team is now experimenting on how it can be implemented to solve LA's traffic problem. This involves massive digging activities at SpaceX's headquarters.
According to Musk, the tunnel will begin across his SpaceX office and would continue to Crenshaw and 105 freeway.
Fallout Shelter
Some observers, however, have noted that aside from the engineering challenge of building an elaborate public tunnel system, Musk's subterranean ambition is bound to face bureaucratic gridlock. Specifically, digging a tunnel under a city will require permits, safeguards, and other regulatory requirements that could probably take years to comply with.
There are also those stressing that if he really wants to experiment on the viability of a tunnel facility, then he could have done it elsewhere, in locations that would incur the least inconvenience to the public and risks to existing underground infrastructures.
But no, the digging has started at SpaceX backyard, and the latest images captured by Bloomberg have further reinforced the theory that Musk could be gunning for something other than a tunnel.
A BGR report noted that after the purported diggings, no tunnel has materialized so far, just one huge hole in the ground.
You will probably say that if Musk wants a fallout shelter, then he could get it built somewhere far like in a mountain or a desert, for instance. But if you were in his shoes, busy overseeing a business empire, wouldn't you want a facility that is just a stone's throw away from your office?
Musk Is Not Alone
It is easy to dismiss the possibility that Musk is building a fallout shelter as a conspiracy theory. One should note, however, that a Texas-based company specializing in building bomb shelters saw an insane 700 percent uptick in orders after Trump's election last November.
A New Yorker report also revealed that survivalism appears to be thriving among entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley recently. It cited the case of Antonio Garcia Martinez, a former Facebook product manager who has built a self-sufficient and fortified facility somewhere in the Pacific Northwest. Garcia also revealed that once word got out that he is building his own project, peers also revealed their own preparations.
"I think people who are particularly attuned to the levers by which society actually works understand that we are skating on really thin cultural ice right now," Garcia-Martinez said.
