Building a bunker to “protect your family”. Since last Thursday, requests have multiplied on the phone and in the mailbox of Giulio Cavicchioli, an entrepreneur who owns a Mantuan company that has been building shelters for years. “There is an unjustified hysteria due to the fear of a war even here in Italy”, explains the entrepreneur: engineers, lawyers and various professionals call, ask for information, make appointments.
Over the past five days, his ‘Minus Energie’ – which imports various systems from a Swiss company also active in the military sector – receives at least ten new applications of this type every day. “Of these requests, half come from people who are inexperienced and disoriented about what to do while so far only a dozen people have taken concrete steps to create a bunker under their own villa”, admits Cavicchioli, who comments: “the outbreak of the conflict in Ukraine triggered an emotional impulse which resulted in a demeaning race to buy ». Armored and underground shelters costing between 50 and 90 thousand euros, requested above all by some Italians in the center and north of the country. From Alessandria to Livorno, passing through Val Camonica, the curiosities concern «the request for information on economic and logistical capabilities to build a bunker for five, six or seven people. We are mainly contacted by women or men who say they are calling on behalf of their wife or partner: they want to protect their children, “says the entrepreneur. And for some the instinct is to prepare to lock themselves up in unassailable cells, made according to Swiss standards: from the “beton door” with a thickness of 30 centimeters of concrete (those for military shelters reach one meter), to the shielded ventilation systems against nuclear detonations, water tanks of one thousand liters each, radio systems for contact with the outside, beds with fireproof materials, spartan bathrooms and special wall paints (without volatile organic substances). ”, Because the air from the outside only passes through a filter while thanks to the electricity it would be possible to cook, heat up or do the laundry.
There are those who hope to have shelters immediately and a couple of customers are already counting on starting the project shortly: “If there is already an excavation on site and there are authorizations, technically it takes about twenty days, it depends on the cement maturation “. Basically, a few days to build a fortress worth tens of thousands of euros to exorcise the new fears. Unjustified fears here in Italy, but fueled by the horror that comes from the real war that is being fought in Ukraine. And while in Kiev the images of civilians holed up in the subway due to missiles multiply, some Italians are already hoping to buy their own escape route, always the same: underground. “Although it is my job – says Cavicchioli – of catastrophic requests, I hope to fulfill as little as possible, after all, if you enter there it is because there is death outside”.