“Out east of town about five miles. They took the missile out after the Cold War. We used to have thousands of them in the Midwest. There were a bunch of talks, and then treaties, between us and the Russians, and then the air force started taking missiles out. Anyway, the Kanwaka silo, out east of town, some developer wants to buy it from the air force and turn it into survivalist condos.”

“That’s a joke, right?”

Cady made a face. “You’d think, but it’s happening around the country. Some people are buying them to live in right now, because they’re cheap and they think it’s cool, but some of the big ones, developers are turning them into hugely expensive shelters for surviving the worst.”

She turned from the fiche reader to a computer, bringing up some sites of missile silos–turned–homes. A man in Texas had created the ultimate bachelor pad somewhere out in the bare, bleak stretches of the state, but the most eye-popping was one Cady showed me in Montana, labeled “The Great Escape: Fifteen underground levels of peace of mind.” A subhead, with lightning bolts flashing off and on around it, screamed that “Fortune Favors the Prepared.”

I bent over Cady’s shoulder for a better view. The website showed a cutaway of the underground part of the missile silo, fifteen stories of condos, with five stories even deeper underground for the mechanicals, swimming pools, water and air filters, and so on. Units started at $1.5 million and came with a five-year supply of freeze-dried food. The silo had massive generators, updated from when they’d only had to power a Titan missile over the pole to Russia. There was also dedicated Wi-Fi—assuming the Internet would function post-Armageddon. Your choice of views from your windows—a computer would give you seascapes or mountains or amber fields of grain so you didn’t have to stare at concrete walls.

I felt as though spiders were crawling up my arms: locked underground, no escape hatch, waiting for the end of the world with a few dozen other people, in units with the granite countertops, German dishwashers, under-the-counter refrigerators, and surround sound that all upscale buyers are looking for in their second home. The Great Escape had sold five units; thirteen more were available but going fast, so make an appointment today.

The slide show on the screen showed an artist’s vision of the exterior, with trees and a heliport surrounded by rosebushes. I wondered if the real deal would include bunkers for snipers to shoot any of the 99 percent trying to flee nuclear winter.

“Is that what’s happening to your silo, the— What is it called?”