government selected a big patch of rolling western wheat grass and buffalo grass about 10 miles southwest of the small town of Edgemont - about 85 miles southwest of Rapid City - for what was then called the Black Hills Ordnance Depot. The site's unusual history dates to 1942, when the U.S. On the more than 20 square miles that comprise the old Black Hills Army Depot, Vicino has found a prepper haven. The people Vicino wants to attract are often called "preppers," or "doomsday preppers," terms that have become shorthand for anyone who is unusually devoted to preparing for disasters. He wants to provide a medical clinic, a general store, a bring-your-own-beverage bar and other facilities and amenities, both to serve the tenants when they visit and to be ready for their full-time use if doomsday ever arrives. People will not be allowed to live there full-time, at least initially, but Vicino said they will come for periodic stays to work on their bunkers. Vicino figures he needs 50 to 100 clients to reserve bunkers with $5,000 deposits before he can start turning the abandoned former military installation into a community. The work and the cost of converting the barren, earth-covered bunkers into livable spaces will be the responsibility of the tenants. The price is $25,000 upfront, and then $1,000 a year thereafter, plus $99 in monthly dues to cover security, well water and other services. The project is the brainchild of Robert Vicino, a California entrepreneur who has an agreement with a local ranching company to offer 575 of the site's estimated 830 bunkers for lease. His wife, meanwhile, never got out of the car as he drove around the sprawling complex, got out to inspect a bunker labeled B-201 and talked to other early attendees at xFest, a three-day gathering for people who want to convert the site's bunkers, which formerly housed bombs, into shelters for protection against tyranny, anarchy, nuclear war, the end times or any other calamity that might befall civilization. â–ºMore: March of time claiming final survivors of South Dakota World War II odyssey "I believe the government is in contact with aliens, and they're lying to us," he told the Rapid City Journal. Though he looked out of place in his yellow cardigan, his designer ball cap and his green cargo pants, he came prepared with an umbrella and mud boots, which proved useful on a cold, rainy and muddy day on the plains of southwestern South Dakota. When he stepped out of his car on the deserted grounds of the former Black Hills Army Depot, his iPhone and cigars fell in the mud. Kenneth Young drove his Mercedes Benz from Rockaway Beach in Queens. They came from Pennsylvania, New Mexico, Indiana and New York, all for the chance to put $5,000 down on one of the hundreds of concrete bunkers in a cow pasture on the remote southern edge of the Black Hills. Watch Video: Video: People buy bunkers in case of disaster
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