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Ever since Ayn Rand dreamed up Galt’s Gulch, real-life libertarians have been inspired to try building their own utopias of freedom, out from under the thumb of oppressive governments. Over the years, I’ve reported on several of these attempts, mostly for the entertainment value of libertarians learning, too late and to their cost, why the state exists.

I’ve written about “Galt’s Gulch Chile“, a real-estate venture that pitched itself as a haven of freedom, but collapsed in a dust cloud of lawsuits as investors and developers accused each other of fraud.

More recently, I reported on the wildcat community of Rio Verde Foothills in Arizona, which found a clever way to skirt regulations about water, only to discover, to their surprise and dismay, that human beings still need water.

Now there’s yet another wannabe libertarian utopia. This time, it’s Vivos xPoint, a planned community in rural South Dakota.

It was originally the Black Hills Ordnance Depot, an complex of bunkers built by the Army for munitions storage during World War II. The military vacated the base in 1967, and the bunkers sat empty for years, until the land was bought by Vivos, a real-estate company. Vivos’ raison d’etre is redeveloping military-surplus bomb shelters and missile silos into luxury bunkers for rich preppers:

The owner and operator of Vivos xPoint, California businessman Robert K. Vicino, told News Watch that he has had great success in leasing more than 200 of the bunkers so far and that the project is highly successful and profitable.

Vicino also said the bunker complex has evolved into a thriving community of like-minded people, most of whom are happy to live there and support one another while realizing their dream of a self-sustainable lifestyle in an area relatively safe from disasters or potential ills that could endanger society and the world.

Let’s hear more about the kind of person who’d plan a project like this:

Vicino said he first became interested in developing or selling survival bunkers in 1982. Vicino said he heard a female voice in his head clearly tell him that, “Robert, you need to build underground bunkers or shelters for thousands of people to survive what is coming,” he said. “I attributed it to the Holy Spirit.”

According to another article, his son Dante Vicino agrees:

The name of the game at Vivos xPoint, Vicino said, is freedom, freedom, and more freedom. And lots of privacy: The bunkers are spaced about 400 feet apart, each one bounded by a 30-foot perimeter.

Within that space, tenants can do pretty much whatever they please within the lease, whether raising a garden, building a hothouse, or creating a small parking area or garage.

“…South Dakota is a sanctuary state for conservative people, military veterans, and police officers. Everybody that’s getting thrown under the bus by all the left-wing [activity] that’s happening. They’re all welcome here,” Vicino said.

Vivos markets itself to wealthy buyers who believe the collapse of civilization is imminent. Their pitch is that the development is remote and well-protected enough to ride out any catastrophe:

The Vivos website says the South Dakota bunker site will be safe from “the marauders during the aftermath of a large-scale cataclysm or catastrophic event.” The site has a U.S. map showing that southwestern South Dakota is outside the range of submersion areas along the coasts, known nuclear targets, the Yellowstone blast zone and “high-crime anarchy zones.”

Am I too cynical for suspecting that the list of “high-crime anarchy zones” includes anywhere non-white people live?

Vicino says he envisioned a peaceful community of respect, cooperation and tolerance. However, unlike the inexplicably harmonious Galt’s Gulch, it hasn’t gone so smoothly. It turns out, when you assemble a self-selected community of distrustful survivalists, paranoid preppers, and gun lovers, all drawn by the promise of getting to do what they want… they don’t get along with each other.

According to the article, Vivos and its residents have been furiously suing each other. There have been complaints to the attorney general and at least one FBI inquiry. Residents have alleged a long list of broken promises: no security, no road maintenance, no trash pickup, no water. And then there’s this eyebrow-raising rule:

Vivos uses a 99-year lease agreement, so residents do not legally own their bunkers.

…Lessees sign a 14-page lease and eight-page list of community rules, and those who don’t pay or violate the rules can be evicted. One rule states that Vivos residents are forbidden from talking to the media about the bunker complex or the company under the threat of fines or possible eviction.

Remember, you move to this place because you love freedom! Now just sign on this dotted line that says you relinquish your First Amendment rights.

This isn’t an aberration. Time and again, libertarians claim to value freedom above all else – but when you look at their planned communities, they invariably have one person or a small elite ruling with absolute power. In my 2016 post “On Seasteading and Liberlands“, I wrote about the proposed “Freedom Ship” whose captain would have been a dictator with an armed private security force.

In 2017, in “The One Percent Embraces Doomsday“, I mentioned another survival project pitched at preppers built into a decommissioned missile silo. It came with the stipulation that the board of directors can force people to labor, prevent them from leaving, and imprison them at will.

Vivos xPoint’s anti-free-speech rules aren’t obscure fine print that no one cares about. They’re being enforced. Residents claim that if they complain, talk to the media, or file suit over living conditions, Vivos evicts them – while keeping all the money they paid up front for that “99-year” lease.

(Interestingly, this mirrors a scenario from Atlas Shrugged. In my review, I asked why banker Midas Mulligan sells land in Galt’s Gulch rather than just renting it, allowing him to profit while keeping control. Vivos has done that exact thing, as real self-interested capitalists should.)

Astonishingly, it gets worse. According to multiple accounts, people who live there are afraid of the staff hired to work at the complex. Many of these complaints center around a worker named Kelly Anderson:

Anderson was shot in the chest during an August confrontation with Streeter, a former Vivos xPoint resident who is fighting his eviction. Streeter said he shot Anderson in self-defense after Anderson threatened Streeter and his family. Anderson, who was unarmed at the time of the confrontation, sent threatening messages about harming Streeter to an acquaintance just prior to the shooting, according to text messages records obtained by News Watch.

According to that text log, Anderson wrote: “I’m about to f— his ass up,” and “What he did isn’t right and I’m gonna educate this mother f—.”

…Bunker resident Rich Roehm said he always carries a .357 handgun but that after the August shooting, he removed the “snake shot” cartridges and replaced them with hollow-point bullets with far more stopping power. Roehm called Anderson, the subcontractor who lives and works at Vivos xPoint, “dangerous.”

…All four residents interviewed by News Watch during an October visit to the site carried handguns for protection.

This is a huge irony that I doubt any of the residents appreciate. They bought these bunkers because they want to be safe from the chaos of the outside world… but it seems the biggest danger they face is from the other people at the complex with them.

This is a lesson that libertarians stubbornly resist learning. They want to be free of the state, to move to a place where nobody’s rules will be imposed on them. But when you try to get away from democracy and all its safeguards, you don’t get rid of authority. It just winds up in the hands of people who have all the power and none of the accountability.