| Vivos wants to help you survive doomsday, for a price. |
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| Vivos is building doomsday shelters, and you can reserve a space for a cool $50,000 |
Robert K. Vincino says "The government has facilities, they just don’t have them for you and me!"[3] Apparently he means the other me… the one that has an extra $50,000 to fork over. Vincino's company Vivos is building shelters, and would like to sell you a space in one for a cool $50 thousand.
The Shelters
Vivos claims that they are "building a nationwide network of 20 underground shelters…" each shelter supposedly designed to accommodate 200 people.[5] Some grandiose claims are made for the shelters: "The Vivos complexes will be deep underground, airtight, fully self-contained shelters designed to survive virtually any catastrophe, or threat scenario…"[6]. According to a Vivos press release, the structures are being built at a shipyard in modules, and shipped to each site[8].
"Spacious"
One of the pages on the website states: "Each self contained shelter complex will comfortably accommodate a community of 172 - 200 people, in spacious quarters, "
Yet, if you do a little math you find that a 20,000 square foot shelter divided among 200 people is an allotment of 100 square feet per person. That's a "spacious" 10 feet by 10 feet.
In the comments below, a poster takes us to task for this statement, saying:
- Vivos provides 100 square feet of effective space per person within its shelters. FEMA recommends just 50 square feet and the Red Cross even less at 40 per person. Vivos is spacious by comparison.
FEMA and Red Cross shelters are meant for short-term lodging in the case of a disaster. At a planned 1 year of residency, 100 SqFt is not 'spacious' by any stretch of the word, especially when you subtract the common areas (kitchens, lounges, community area, and the entire lower level of the central hub).
"Private"
Another page touts the "private living quarters". However if you look at the 'typical' spoke plan, you see 16 beds, 2 tiny bathrooms, and one kitchen.
What's missing?
After reviewing the shelter "plans" (which consist of several computer-generated images) we noted some items appear to be missing from the shelters.
Airtight?
The Vivos claim that the complexes will be airtight raises an important consideration. A person at rest would deplete the oxygen in a 1 cubic meter space in 2 hours.[2] According to NASA it takes 67.32 pounds of food, water, and air to sustain one astronaut per day.[4].
Vivios claims that their shelters will be able to support 200 people for 1 year[6]. Some simple math yields the following: $67.32 \times 200 \times 365 = 4,914,360$ or about 5 million pounds (nearly 2,500 tons) of supplies (food, water, and air).1
Vivos further claims that 20 shelters will be online by December 21st 2012, so we are now talking about 50,000 tons of supplies, excluding fuel for their generators.
After reviewing the plans, we note that the storage area for 2,500 tons of supplies required to sustain 200 people for 1 year appears to be missing.
How much electricity?
The average per-capita use of electricity in the United States in 2005 was almost 14,000 kWh (kilowatt hours)[9] per year, or about 1.6 kW per person. Let us assume that people living in a communal shelter will use much less than that, and so we will use the figure of 1 kW per person.
200 people means 200 kW. Typically generators are sized at 400% of the design power, so it would be typical to select an 800 to 1000 kW generator to serve a 200 kW requirement. A 1000 kW generator running at 1/4 load will use 21.6 gallons of diesel fuel per hour.[10] For a 1 year supply, Vivos will have to stock at least 189,000 gallons of fuel.
After reviewing the plans, we note that the 800 to 100 kW generator (which would be about the size of a big-rig trailer, appears to be missing, as does the approximately 200,000 gallons of fuel.
In the comments on this page, someone attempts to address this lack by claiming first that the generators are not shown, but also that the site utilizes low voltage systems. Unfortunately, lowering the voltage doesn't magically fix the issue. Power is calculated by the formula P = I*E where P is power in watts, I is current in Amps, and E is 'energy'2 in Volts. A light that requires 10 watts (as in a CFL bulb) would still require 10 amps if it were redesigned for a low voltage system. Lowering the voltage means you would have to increase the current.
Have any been built?
According to Vivos[7] the shelters are being constructed and commissioned now. however, on the "members" page we find the following text:
Once a critical mass of ownership candidates is selected for each Vivos shelter location, from the Vivos membership pool, Vivos will extend invitations to join a specific ownership group. Selected candidates will open escrow for the purchase of their equity ownership interest of the nearest Vivos facility. Vivos will then complete the construction, equipping, outfitting and provisioning of each shelter facility (emphasis added)
So, it does not sound as if any of the structures have been built, with the exception of the Barstow facility, which is "being retrofitted", does not follow the published plan of the other facilities. It is not "airtight" and is not built in the dome-and-spoke plan of the proposed network of shelters. The Barstow facility appears to be an underground blast shelter from the 1950s that is being refitted with modern amenities. However, the videos of the facility on the Vivos site show staircases, and large empty spaces painted with a two-tone color scheme that reminds us of a prison.
Again, we are taken to task by a poster who states:
- Vivos already has over 300,000 square feet of structures built in the USA and another 250,000 built in Europe. Guess this author wasn't on the alert list of those that need to know!
We will ignore the little slam at the end, assuming that the poster does not speak for Vivos. If we accept these figures, then up to 15 shelters have been built in the U.S., and another 12 in Europe (assuming we are talking about the 20,000 SqFt of living space, and not the additional square footage necessary for storage).
Response by Vivos
Emily Mathieu writes a blog on the Toronto Star website, and wrote a post on June 14th about Vivos. During her research, she came across this page, and contacted Vivos about it. She received (in her words) a 'rather heated response' from Barbi Grossman, Media Director for The Vivos Group.
Mathieu posted the response she received from Grossman in a second post on June 15. Here is Grossman's response:
Emily,
We are well aware of this moron’s website and attempt to defrock virtually everyone and everything that is providing solutions to the Earth changing events and catastrophes that are already around us. Unfortunately, there are many uninformed “hoaxers” professing their lack of knowledge and/or expertise to the naïve. They don’t have a clue about the virility of our hardened shelters, originally built by the government in each respective country to withstand 20 megaton nuclear blasts, their state-of-the-art construction, impervious strength, mechanical and electronic systems, Nuclear, Biological and Chemical filtration, extensive security devices, food, fuel and medical provisions stocked for a fully autonomous survival for the Vivos members that will inhabit each shelter. Frankly, the ‘2012hoax[ed]’ websites misled allegations are not worth responding to.
Proof of Vivos shelters may be found at each of these pages, and more throughout our website:
http://www.terravivos.com/secure/indiana.htm Completion scheduled for late August 2011
http://www.terravivos.com/secure/nebraska.htm Completion scheduled for Fall 2011
Or, perhaps you would prefer to take the word of CNBC, CNN, CBS, NBC, ABC, FOX, MSNBC, BBC, CBC, N24, NPR, NTV, Al Jazeera, RTL, SBS, Nippon TV, Reuters, and hundreds of other international media that have personally toured and inspected the Vivos shelters. http://www.terravivos.com/secure/news.htm
Unfortunately, ‘2012hoax[ed]’ will never see, know for certain, nor be offered a spot in Vivos. They and their ill-informed followers will be the ones banging on the door the loudest to get in.
So, which side of the door would you like your readers to be on?
Best regards,
Barbi
In a followup post on June 17 Mathieu updates us on the latest communications from Vivos, which contain some interesting tidbits.
The largest North American shelter is "136,000 square feet, on 4 floor levels with accommodations for 1,000 people," the spokesperson wrote.
They are also working on a facility in Europe that is "nearly 250,000 square feet and capable of accommodating 2,000 people.
This would probably be the retrofitted bomb shelter in Barstow. The square-footage per person has gone up to 136 square feet, which is an improvement, but not much of one. In addition, the facility is designed to accommodate 1,000 people for 6 months (in contradiction to the information available on their website). Above we calculated that 2,500 tons of supplies (food and water) would be required to sustain 200 people for 1 year. The storage requirements for this facility would be 6,250 tons. Again, is this stored in the facility? If so, where? What does this do to the per-capita square footage of the facility?
Assuming the European facility is also stocked for 6 months, then they would need 12,500 tons of supplies (again, excluding fuel) in their 250,000 square foot bunker.
Another interesting tidbit in the article was this:
"The Vivos 1000 economy class shelter is stocked for just 6 months duration to bring down the cost of co-ownership."
So, it sounds like their initial sales are not going as briskly as they would like, and they are now proposing an 'economy class' bunker in their portfolio. First the company pitches the 'Luxury' model, so that their clients can escape the riff-raff, and now they're selling to the riff-raff.
It's probably a good thing they don't disclose the locations of the bunkers. Someone might be tempted to weld the door shut behind them.
Conclusion
Vivos is an organization that has found a way to capitalize on people's fears of the 'End of the World', and is actually promoting those fears in order to rake in more profits. They are a true 'Profit of Doom'
