Demand for bomb shelters surging

Business has never been better at Atlas Survival Shelters, which ships bunkers to customers around the world from its U.S. factories. Among the best sellers: the BombNado, with a starting price of $18,999.

The popularity of the company’s doomsday fortifications is no surprise, considering the state of the world in general and, specifically, Kim JongUn’s pursuit of a missile that can hit the continental U.S. Curiously, though, the most furious surge of interest isn’t in America but Japan, a country that’s long been within North Korea’s striking distance.

“Japan’s going hog wild right now,” said Ron Hubbard, owner of Atlas Survival. The Montebello, California-based company makes about a dozen different underground refuge models intended to be inhabitable for six months to a year, some outfitted with escape tunnels, decontamination rooms and bulletproof hatches.

While the Japanese have viewed North Korea as a menace for decades, the rogue regime’s July 4 launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile raised the level of alarm among preppers, as some people serious about emergency preparedness call themselves.

Japan has its own small bunker-making sector, but the U.S., unique in its abundance of survivalist networks, is ground zero for get-ready-forArmageddon businesses.

Like Atlas Survival, underground-shelter manufacturer Rising S Co. in Murchison, Texas, has been inundated. Inquiries about its steel-clad products have doubled in the past three weeks.