I renovated a missile silo for $800,000. It’s not for everyone.

• Arkansas resident GT Hill bought a missile silo for $90,000 in 2010, which was decommissioned in the 1980s.
• He spent $800,000 over 10 years converting the space, but doesn’t recommend others try it.
• Initially hoping to turn it into a primary residence, Hill turned it into an Airbnb, hosting authors, acrobats and YouTubers.

This is an as-told essay based on a conversation with GT Hill, a 49-year-old former technical marketing executive living in Vilonia, Arkansas. He bought a decommissioned missile silo worth $90,000 and turned it into an Airbnb. The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

I grew up in eastern Oregon, in the middle of nowhere, so I did welding and many other mechanical things. I was a jet engine mechanic in the Air Force and spent my main career in engineering. I worked for a handful of companies in Silicon Valley as a director of technical marketing.

One day I got a haircut in Searcy, Arkansas. These old guys were talking about the missile silos that were around Arkansas. I had never heard of these places that housed nuclear missiles, so I started researching.

Probably 20% of my interest was in the aspect of doomsday preparation, or the idea of ​​preparing to survive in the event of a catastrophe. I’m not fully prepared for doomsday, but I like the idea of ​​being prepared for the unknown, including having food storage and some survival skills.

If you talk to the hardcore preppers, which I’m not, rocket silos aren’t that great depending on what you think the worst case scenario is. If it’s a Walking-Dead style apocalypse, you don’t want to be in a missile silo because you’ll be stuck in it.

Another 30% of my interest was in the modern archaeological aspect of owning something like this. I really wanted to dig it up and see what was inside. Initially my intention was to turn it into a home for my family.

Finally, I was interested in owning a missile silo because it’s just awesome. The place has £7,000 doors. The three floors are made of a steel structure nicknamed ‘the birdcage’.

It stands on eight springs and actually hangs from the ceiling. And the reason is that if it is hit by a bomb, the structure will vibrate to try to preserve the equipment and the people inside.

The rattle space or gap between the floors and walls allows me to put my back against the wall and push the structure to get it moving.

I bought the historic silo for $90,000. It was decommissioned in the 1980s as part of an international treaty.

I found my missile silo, called Titan II, online. I started talking to the previous owner in January 2010 and by August I owned the car.

Titan II was denuclearized after the US and Russia signed a treaty in 1979 to limit each country’s nuclear weapons. The US disarmed Titan II as part of those negotiations, called Strategic Arms Limitation Talks II or SALT II.

They had to destroy the silo in very specific ways. They actually had to blow up and fill the top of the structure. So it was an underground structure, but completely buried.

I bought the nine-acre property in Vilonia, Arkansas, for $90,000, which was about a $30,000 premium over the value of the land alone.

There were three main components. There is the silo itself, a structure with a diameter of 17 meters or actually a 15-storey building, which sits underground at a depth of 50 metres. Then there is a long tunnel that connects the silo to the central area that is 10 meters underground. The last part of it is the launch control center, which goes up to 15 meters underground.

The whole process was risky and expensive. I don’t advise people to copy me.

Some people look at an old house and think, “I definitely don’t want to rebuild that.” I liked the challenge. I knew we could build a pretty cool place. It just took a lot more money and time than I expected.

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In October 2010 I finally got the money and time together. I rented a big bulldozer and an excavator, and then we started digging.

The entire complex was full of water. We could see water pouring over us, so we had to figure out how to open the front door of the control center without dying. When the door opened, a huge wave came over us. It was scary.

There were other challenges. There was asbestos and methane gas upstairs in the control center, where the crew quarters were. I recorded videos of the entire process, and you can even hear my voice changing because of the methane in the air.

I had way more time than money. It’s not that I didn’t have the money for it, but when you get the money, how do you prioritize its use? Do you throw it in a hole in the ground or spend it on a vacation for your family? Or upgrade the current home you live in? I had to make many of those decisions during the ten-year renovation period.

After spending $800,000, we’re probably making $80,000 a year in income from the property now that I’m renting it out on Airbnb.

People ask what was the hardest part about doing this, and it has nothing to do with work. It’s the mental side. You spend money on a hole in the ground, and you get nothing in return. It ended well for me, but the average person shouldn’t do it.

It’s not a great way to spend time or money.

We turned the rocket into an Airbnb and hosted YouTubers, acrobats and a writer who lived cut off from the world for ten days.

We still live on the property, but we never moved in full time. We spent several nights there as a family, either for fun or as a shelter from large tornadoes.

There are no walls and doors, so there is no real master bedroom. The top floor has a king-size bed, a large, open shower and a freestanding bath. The middle floor has two queen beds that we can move to make more space. Then the kitchen and living room are located on the lower floor, which also serves as a dance floor and can be transformed into a club.

We organize everything on site, including meetings. If it’s semi-legal and people want to do it there and pay for it, that’s fine with us.

The first booking we got was in November 2020. It was a couple who were going on their honeymoon, but they got a little too drunk at their wedding to make the trip. Instead, they sent their witness.

Our original rate was $275 per night with a $75 cleaning fee. We have since increased the prices a few times, so now we are between $400 and $700 for a one night stay depending on whether it is a weekday or it’s weekend.

COVID was clearly still going on when we started listing it, and I marketed the silo as the ultimate in social distancing. There was a YouTube couple, Kara and Nate, with about 3 million subscribers, who came to stay in 2021. They were travel influencers who started making a living during the pandemic.

I’d say 70% of our bookings for the next year came through the video they made about their stay. Today, I would have paid an influencer couple $5,000 to stay for that kind of exposure. With them it was purely a coincidence.

I once deliberately locked a woman there for ten days. In 2021, an author named Lynne Peeples called me and said, “I’m working on a book about circadian rhythm, and I need a place that has absolutely no indication of time.” She wanted to see what would happen to her sleep cycle. Before she arrived, I had to make sure everything the time told was covered; even the Netflix account couldn’t display the time.

We had acrobats there for a charity event. We’ve had bands perform. We’ve had birthday parties and even some swingers. I’m a pretty open guy. Just treat each other and the place well.

The only thing we haven’t had yet is a wedding. And a big part of the reason for that is because of the stairs. It’s five flights away and normally everyone has at least one older relative present.

It’s been a pretty terrible investment any way you look at it, but it’s turned out to be more than that. It is now part of my identity.