Record number of New York elites are having panic rooms installed in their homes - which cost between $50,000 and $1m and have electrified door knobs and walls that shoot pepper spray

New Yorkers are going connected a paranoid spending spree. 

'I've ne'er been busier,' 1 of America's longest-running makers of high-end 'panic rooms' confessed this week.

Heavily fortified 'safe spaces,' immoderate pinch electrified doorknobs, ballistic doors and  facial-recognition locks, person go each nan rage among Manhattan's elite.

At a starting value of $50,000, these custom-built panic rooms, complete pinch bulletproof night-vision gear, aesculapian kits and nutrient supplies, tin beryllium constructed to blend successful invisibly pinch immoderate building — from a stately aged pre-war townhouse to a glassy penthouse loft.

But those prices tin easy balloon up to $1 cardinal aliases much for luxury apartments, arsenic materials for illustration blast-proof doors weighing thousands of pounds costs other to ship.

Makers of these hidden rooms judge nan spike successful business came astir during nan anti-police-violence protests aft nan decease of George Floyd successful 2020 that saw unrest crossed New York City for months.

'I dislike to sound paranoid, but I don't spot nan bodyguards. I don't spot security,' one panic room-maker said, justifying his precocious price. 'I don't spot anybody.'

David Vranicar, nan proprietor of a Florida-based building and creation patient that specializes successful panic rooms, Fortified Ballistic Security, is conscionable 1 of galore leaders successful his manufacture who has noticed a roar successful nan metropolis complete nan past year.

'New York has gotten really engaged for america lately,' Vranicar told existent property site Curbed. 'People are not emotion safe nan measurement they utilized to.' 

Another shaper of bespoke hidden rooms and concealed passageways, Steve Humble of Creative Home Engineering successful Arizona, traced nan spike successful New York-area business to nan anti-police-violence protests aft nan decease of George Floyd successful 2020.  

'That activity has benignant of died down,' Humble said, 'but it was replaced successful ample portion by nan persistent uptick successful convulsive crime successful ample cities for illustration New York.' 

While FBI data has shown a melodramatic alteration successful convulsive crime nationally, down 49 percent successful full since 1993, pinch steep drops successful robberies (-74 percent), aggravated assaults (-39 percent), murders and manslaughter (-34 percent) — nationalist cognition has spiked upward.

Over 3 quarters of Americans judge crime has gone up according to polling by Pew, fears stoked by waves of violent clashes betwixt protestors and police and countless different shocking moments caught connected portion and posted to societal media.

Nevertheless, according to Vranicar, 'It is amended to person it and not request it than to request it and not person it.'

He precocious installed information features for an flat astatine nan tony, luxury condo building 1 Central Park West.

The condo, according to Vranicar, needed to beryllium reinforced pinch alloy and ballistic-proof doors, and its panic room came pinch facial-recognition tech that unlocks pinch a glimpse that, during definite hours, would admit nan faces of family staff. 

But Bill Rigdon, nan president and CEO of Panic Room Builders, who consulted connected nan 2002 thriller Panic Room starring Jodie Foster, said he has worked connected overmuch much utmost protect measures successful caller years.

Rigdon, who started his business building bunkers for Mormons successful Nevada complete 4 decades ago, precocious designed panic rooms pinch electrified door handles, and hidden devices that tag intruders pinch a substance of colored overgarment and capsicum spray.

The unsocial characteristic not only helps neutralize intruders, but makes it easier to way nan criminals if they effort to flee.

Rigdon said he has besides fortified rooms to make them much tin of withstanding atomic attack, but noted that a cardinal rumor clients thin to hide is adding a bathroom.

'I erstwhile had a Fox News newsman who had a full scheme for a basement bunker wherever 13, 14 group could enactment for a play of time,' Rigdon told Curbed.

'But,' he added, 'there was nary bathroom.' 

When pressed for comment, Rigdon would neither corroborate nor contradict that this customer was nan precocious president and CEO of Fox News Roger Ailes, who died successful 2017.

'Doomsday prepping' utilized to beryllium seen arsenic a hobby relegated to nan conspiratorial fringe, but successful caller years moreover ordinary, mediate people Americans person embraced nan practice. 

US residents spent a staggering $11 cardinal connected endurance items from April 2022 to April 2023, according to 1 estimate.

And astir a 3rd of each Americans now admit to prepping, surveys show, moreover though fewer person nan resources of today's billionaire bunker-builders.

Outside of New York, nan world's wealthiest person progressively spent hundreds of millions connected securing much sprawling underground compounds, backstage islands and (for nan simply rich) 'survival condos.'

Late past year, for example, news collapsed that Facebooke laminitis and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg was building a $100 cardinal hidden wall beneath his Hawaiian land ranch, complete pinch its ain power and nutrient supplies and blast-resistant doors.

Rigdon's proposal for mean New Yorkers and anyone other looking for a small much security, he said, is to banal up to a afloat month's worthy of stiff nutrient successful lawsuit nan US descends into a civilian war. 

'I activity pinch authorities agencies,' he said, 'people who know, and they're worried.'