When Larry Hall hired a psychologist to look over his plans for converting an old missile silo into a place for families to ride out a disaster, those plans were already pretty far along.

“She looked at the blueprints and said ‘Stop!’ ” Hall said as he stood in the community room near the top of the silo. Hall has converted the silo space into secure, luxury condos designed so residents can ride out a disaster for up to five years with no outside contact.

It seemed, Hall said, that almost nothing in the plans was right: Even ceiling heights had to be changed from 8 feet — the standard in most homes — to 9 feet.

“She said we needed more room per person, an indoor park, different lighting,” Hall said. “She pointed at what we had labeled as a storeroom, and said, ‘What’s this?’ ”

Hall had envisioned warehouse-like storage for canned food.

“She said we can’t do that, that we should make it like a miniature Whole Foods,” he said, with bright posters of food on the walls, glass cases to display fresh produce and loaves of fresh-baked bread stacked on wine barrels.

And it wasn’t just the structure that would have to change, the psychologist told Hall — the residents would have to as well.

“She said to get rid of most of the support staff,” Hall said.

Instead, the residents — who would pay millions of dollars for a condo — would be expected to work at least four hours a day, with job responsibilities rotating on a monthly basis.

Welcome to Survival Condos, a former Atlas ‘F’ ICBM silo under north-central Kansas where more than 12,000 cubic yards of concrete meet Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

Money, concrete and steel

When Hall bought the silo in 2008, his goal was to build a resort-like setting where around 75 people could ride out a range of possible catastrophes, such as an economic collapse, a plague or other natural or manmade disasters.

He’s been around construction most of his life. For his 14th birthday, his father, an architect, got him false documents saying he was older — so he could work on construction sites in New York City.

“I can build a house starting with an empty field,” he said. “The foundation, the framing, the plumbing — everything.”

He went on to become a software engineer, working for various government projects and developing software at Apple Computer in the company’s early days.

The original concrete silo contains some 6,000 cubic yards of concrete, strengthened with steel rebar up to 6 inches in diameter. At the top, the walls are 9 feet thick, but taper to 2.5 feet at the bottom.

The Atlas F silos were built in the early 1960s, but had a very short lifespan and were decommissioned by 1965.

Hall estimates it would cost around $120 million to build just the silo today. His total cost of buying and renovating the silo is around $18 million, which he financed with his own money.

200 feet below surface

Among the first projects was removing the two, 93-ton concrete and steel doors covering the top of the silo, and removing the steel scaffolding inside the silo — all 108 tons of it.

A concrete dome covering more than 20,000 square feet and supported by massive steel I-beams was built over the top of the silo and covered with several feet of dirt. The dome includes the entrance — two steel doors, each weighing 8 tons — the parking garage and a swimming pool. The dome alone cost some $2.5 million, Hall said.

In all, the silo has 54,000 square feet of space, spread across 15 levels, with levels 5 to 11 as the residences. The 15th level is more than 200 feet below the surface.

Hall prefers to keep the location of the complex secret, and on the rare occasions he does allow news media onto the site, not divulging the location is one of the conditions.

“Every time this hits the press, we end up with people coming by; we’ve had people climbing the fence at 3 a.m.,” he said. “People have invested serious money in these places and don’t want lots of gawkers. Curiosity is a good thing — but people just think they can walk in.”

The complex has 24-hour security.

A full floor for $3 million

A full floor, with about 1,800 square feet of living space, sells for $3 million, plus a $5,000 monthly fee. It includes three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a kitchen with high-end, stainless steel appliances, a dining room and a living room. It’s designed for six to 10 people.

A half-floor, with 900 square feet, sells for $1.5 million, plus monthly fees.

This project is sold out, and another, larger one, about 30 miles away, is under construction. It’s already about half sold.

Some rooms in each unit are equipped with “windows,” which are actually high-definition televisions turned on their sides and designed to give residents their pick of scenic vistas, such as mountains or beaches.

“When you turn those on, it creates a profound change,” Hall said. “What we found, surprisingly, is that with all those views available, people wanted the live feed from the cameras right outside, just watching the wind turbine turn.”

The wind turbine is one of five energy sources for the facility.

Variety of power sources

The Survival Condos draws power from the local grid. There also are two large Caterpillar generators with enough diesel fuel for 21/2  years; the wind turbine, and a room filled with 348 absorbent glass mat batteries, each putting out 2 volts at 520 amps.

The batteries alone are sufficient to run the facility for 48 hours.

It’s all managed through a sophisticated computer system that constantly monitors energy use and balances power sources, drawing power primarily from the wind turbine, then from the grid, the batteries and finally the generators.

Even with little or no wind, Hall said, the highest monthly electric bill has been for about $5,000 — but during windy parts of the year, it can drop to around $2,500.

The idea, Hall said, is for the facility to be completely self-contained for five years or more — a goal that requires a mix of both technology and psychology, and lots of attention to detail.

Yes, it has heating and air

The heating and air-conditioning is handled by 34 geothermal wells. Several additional wells provide water for the pool, residential use and firefighting. A reverse-osmosis system can make up to 10,000 gallons a day of bottled-water-quality water.

Firefighting can be problematic in an enclosed structure. In the security suite, Hall shows a large panel specifically for smoke control.

“It has 97 separate vents, so if we have a fire in one side of one level, we can vent that one area to the surface and keep smoke out of the rest of the place,” he said. There are also sprinklers and wall-mounted fire hoses throughout.

“Evacuation is usually the first thing you should do in a fire, but that’s not an option when we’re on lockdown,” Hall said. “We assume outside is deadlier than inside.”

Ready for about anything

Exactly what might make the outside deadly is up for speculation, but Hall said the Survival Condos facility is designed for nearly any contingency. Outside air can be filtered through a system purchased in Finland (with approval from the U.S. State Department) designed to stop any nuclear, biological or chemical contaminants, and a separate system can filter out micro-fine particles of volcanic ash.

There is also a security detail and an armory, and from the security control room, a guard can monitor dozens of security cameras and also “deploy a number of nonlethal and lethal defenses by remote control,” Hall said.

Even the location of the swimming pool on the upper floor is by design.

“50,000 gallons of water makes a pretty good radiation shield,” Hall said.

In all, Hall said, 95 percent of the construction work went to Kansans, including Salina companies such as Ferco and Pestinger’s Heating and Air, and local artist Pat Mikesell, who was hired to paint the mural in the pool room.

We’re not ‘stuck in a hole’

“The first time Mr. Hall took me down there, largely there was nothing, just a set of stairs,” Mikesell recalled. “There was still water in the bottom, and they were still hauling out metal.

“The only thing I had to go on was his vision,” Mikesell said. “We saw a place that was dark and damp, and he told us it was going to be completely different — and it is!”

Along with artists Candy Sanford, Leah Morgan and Erin Boyer, Mikesell spent about four months on the pool mural.

“We wanted to alleviate that ‘stuck in a hole’ feeling,” Mikesell said. “And I think we did. Once we got some of it done, we started to buy into it ourselves, and it felt more like working outdoors.

“The best compliment we got on the place, it was from one of the people who owns one of the condos — I can’t say who — said it had a great feeling of being outside without being outside.”

A tough sell — at first

No, you didn’t miss the apocalypse. Condo owners and their families regularly visit the facility for days or weeks at a time.

At first, Hall said, selling potential residents on the facility was tough.

“It sounded like another expense, millions of dollars for something they might never use.

“We started talking about it as an asset, a place you can go and have fun, be comfortable — a second home,” Hall said. “When we have families and kids here, the place really comes alive — kids on the climbing wall, dogs running around in the park. ... We encourage people to bring their pets.

“When it hits the fan, people are going to be under a lot of stress anyway, and telling them they couldn’t bring their pets — couldn’t bring a member of their family — that wasn’t going to work.”

A dog-walking area

Mikesell and the other artists also did the mural in the dog-walking area, which has way more engineering than meets the eye.

The floor is covered with an artificial turf. Under that is a layer of flat drainage tile, then a vinyl surface and then concrete, with the entire floor sloping to a drain at a back corner.

The entire surface can be hosed off when needed, washing pet urine down the drain but also maintaining air circulation so mildew doesn’t form under the turf.

Air circulation was also an issue in the aquaponics farm — where there’s another mural from Mikesell and team.

Aquaponics — fish, food

The aquaponics area is in a separate structure that formerly served as the silo’s command center: a round concrete structure about 100 feet from the silo, connected by a tunnel to the silo’s general store on the fourth level down.

The rooms house large, plastic containers for growing produce, as well as deeper tanks for raising tilapia and equipment for aerating and feeding the fish tanks, removing fish waste and composting it for plant fertilizer.

Suspended from the ceiling over the plant containers are dozens of LED lighting units — the color of the light can be customized to the needs of each type of plant — with built-in fans.

Once all the equipment was installed, Hall said, a problem was discovered.

“The fans blow air down onto the plants,” he explained. “But in nature, wind doesn’t come from the top, it comes from the side. If you don’t get air moving under the leaves, you can get mildew there.”

The solution?

Large fans mounted on the walls, pushing air around the room horizontally.

Can’t have any rust

Another issue was the metal reinforcing bars bolted around the edges of the hydroponics containers.

“See, that little bit of rust around the bolt?” Hall said, pointing. “Even though it’s powder-coated, it’s rusting, and they said we can’t have any rust in there. So we’re replacing them with stainless steel.”

Once up and running, Hall said, hydroponics systems can produce eight times as much food per square foot as a traditional outdoor garden, and should produce enough to feed the residents.

The canned food, with a 30-year shelf life, is mostly for variety, supplementing what’s grown in the former missile control room — and as an emergency backup.

There’s a small alcove off the tunnel connecting the aquaponics facility with the main complex, which Hall said will hold a dwarf apple tree.

“It only grows to 8 feet tall, it’s self-pollinating, has seven different kinds of apples, and produces nine months a year,” he said.

A steak and turkey

Down on the 15th level is a walk-in freezer, with separate lockers for each family. It can drop from room temperature to -30F in about an hour, using geothermal cooling.

Hall said he asked early owners about whether they wanted a freezer, and at first, no one did.

“Then they got to thinking, ‘If I’m going to be down here for five years, it might be nice to have a steak, and a turkey a couple times a year,’ so we put in the freezer,” he said.

Hall tells of another resident, a professional chef, who insisted on a gas cooking range, and said not having one was a deal-breaker.

“We had two other owners already, and I called them, and they both said they hadn’t thought of that, but were glad someone had,” he said.

Between the propane tank, the piping for the gas and monitoring and safety systems, making cooking with gas a possibility cost about $100,000.

The bar and a theater

But there are times when Hall said he’s gone against the wishes of potential residents.

The bar on level 14 is an example.

“There were people who said they wouldn’t buy if we had a bar,” Hall said. “I thought it was important.”

Family is important, Hall said, but it doesn’t fulfill all of a person’s needs for social interaction.

More than half of the complex’s space is devoted to public spaces, to encourage residents not to stay in their condos. When visiting the general store, residents will be allowed to take food for only two or three days at a time.

“Think about it this way,” Hall says. “You love your family, but bury a shipping container or an Airstream trailer in your backyard, and try spending a weekend in there with your family. You won’t make it.”

The bar shares the 14th level with a 17-seat movie theater that is tied into the complex’s entertainment system, which includes 18 terabytes of storage — enough for 5,000 movies and thousands of music albums.

Everybody has a job

The floor above that houses a gym, including a sauna and steam room. The 12th floor houses a library and classroom space.

Currently, Hall said, the families who have bought units have a total of 19 children — several of preschool age.

Teaching is one of the jobs adults will rotate through as part of their four-hour daily commitment; the children’s “job” will be to learn.

Having a job, having things to do and to feel needed and useful is important, Hall said.

“Maslow’s hierarchy of needs talks about food and water being basic needs, but further up the list, you have to have things to do,” Hall said. “You can’t just sit around.”

Rotating through jobs will allow for more interaction among the residents, he said, and eliminate the problem of a “single point of failure, having only one person who knows how to do a job.”

It will also prevent a problem that surfaced during the Biosphere 2 experiments in the 1990s, in which small groups of people were locked into a closed environment.

“It was just six people, and within a few months they had formed three separate cliques that couldn’t stand each other,” Hall said.

Home away from home

The first complex sold out months ago, and construction is already under way on a second, much-larger one about 30 miles away, which is already about half sold.

That one will have 150,000 square feet, and is intended to hold about 120 people.

“Three times the space, and less than twice as many people,” Hall said.

Some of that extra space is for “penthouse” units that cover 3,200 square feet and sell for $4.5 million — but there’s also even more emphasis on public places, including a bowling alley and a golf simulator. It will also have space for raising chickens.

“Our goal here was to have something that isn’t just utilitarian,” Hall said. “We wanted it to be a second home.”