Russia’s Oreshnik strike boosted bunker sales in US – media

Russia’s combat use of its Oreshnik hypersonic ballistic missile last month led to a fourfold increase in the number of Americans looking for nuclear bunkers, the CEO of a Texas-based survival shelter company has claimed.

The Russian military carried out the first-ever combat test of the Oreshnik on November 21, using the ballistic missile to batter a Ukrainian military industrial facility in Dnepr with multiple hypersonic warheads. Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the decision to unveil the Oreshnik was made in response to the US and its allies giving Ukraine permission to use their missiles in long-range strikes on internationally recognized Russian territory.

The Oreshnik can carry nuclear or conventional warheads and travels at ten times the speed of sound. Western air-defense systems “cannot intercept such missiles,” Putin said in a televised speech. “It is impossible.”

Within hours of the strike, Atlas Survival Shelters CEO Ron Hubbard’s “phone rang nonstop,” The Independent reported on Tuesday.

Hubbard, who manufactures bombproof bunkers and fallout shelters at the world’s largest factory of its kind in Texas, said that four customers placed orders within 24 hours of the strike in Ukraine, while more ordered additional reinforcement for their existing bunkers. On a typical day, Hubbard told the British newspaper, he sells a single bunker.

Prices start at $20,000 and go up to the multi millions, he explained, adding that the average customer spends $500,000 on a shelter.

Prior to the Oreshnik strike, Hubbard said that Covid-19 lockdowns and the Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Hamas conflicts had already driven an uptick in sales. According to market research cited by The Independent, the US market for bomb and fallout shelters is expected to grow from $137 million last year to $175 million by 2030, with buyers most often citing “the rising threat of nuclear or terrorist attacks or civil unrest.”

Hubbard told The Independent that his bunkers can withstand “anything from a tornado to a hurricane to nuclear fallout, to a pandemic to even a volcano erupting.” However, it is highly unlikely that any commercially available bunker could survive a hypersonic missile strike.

While the destructive power of the Oreshnik may have driven more customers to Hubbard, the missile would likely never be used against targets in the contiguous US, even in the event of an all-out war. As an Intermediate-Range Ballistic Missile (IRBM), the Oreshnik has a range of between 3,000km and 5,500km, placing only sections of the US West Coast within striking distance.