Horning's Mills, Ontario

Ark Two Shelter

This extensive nuclear fallout shelter built from 42 school buses could house 500 people in its tunnels.

As political tensions rise around the world some doomsday preppers are preparing for the fallout of a nuclear war. None of them, however, are as prepared as Bruce Beach, who has created a massive subterranean shelter out of 42 recycled school buses, topped with layers of concrete and soil, in an attempt to save humanity from armageddon.

The Ark Two Shelter is located in Horning Mills, Canada, and covers about 10,000 square feet of land. Beach, who believes that nuclear war will inevitably occur in the coming years, began constructing the shelter in the early 1980s and has cumulatively spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on construction equipment and legal fees to build what he views as a necessity for the future of the human race.

After entering the shelter through a small above-ground portal, survivors of a nuclear attack would descend 14 feet below ground to access the matrix of interconnected school buses that make up Ark Two. The underground complex includes dozens of fully functional rooms into the school bus shells, including two kitchens, a radio communications center, a doctor’s office, an exercise area, and even a laundry room.

Beach has also managed to equip his shelter with a steady supply of basic utilities such as lighting, heating, running water, an intricate air circulation system, and three months worth of diesel fuel to power the shelter’s electric generators.

Although the local government has desperately tried to shut down Beach’s operation, cumulatively penalizing him with $250,000 in legal expenses, the man has refused to forfeit his life’s work. In total, Ark Two has the capacity to house over 500 people. But don’t get your hopes up, adults; Beach’s plan calls for 80 percent of the shelter’s population to be children, which he sees as the optimal way to prevent humankind from going extinct.

Know Before You Go

If you want to tour the subterranean shelter, Beach will show you around if you contact him first, on the one condition that you contribute some manual labor to the project in return. The shelter’s not gonna maintain itself!