Horning’s Mills is a quiet Canadian village 100 km North of Toronto. This is also a place Bruce and Jean Beach call home. The 12.5-acre homestead seems normal enough but there is more to it than what meets the eye. Under those green fields is the largest private doomsday bunker made of 42 school buses.
The private doomsday bunker is known as The Ark Two and measures 10,000 square feet. It is primarily made up of 42 old school buses encased in concrete and is buried 14 feet into the ground. It was designed to accommodate 500 people for several months and is equipped with everything you might need to survive including food, plumbing, underground well, a dentist chair, and even a daycare.
Bruce Beach is currently 83 years of age and began this project in 1980 during the height of the cold war. The construction was completed in 1982. Bruce is originally from Chicago and was working as an electrical engineer there in the 60s when the cold war began to escalate. Fearing nuclear attack, he settled in the quiet of Horning’s Mills and met his future wife Jean here.
His bunker has been ready for the past 35 years but thankfully it has never been needed and even today it is functional, even though the technology used is outdated. “I used to always say the end of the world was going to be two years from now,” Beach told the National Post. “But now I say it is going to be two weeks from now — and if I am wrong, I will revise my date. People think, ‘What a nut,’ and I know that, but I don’t mind, I understand the world looks upon me that way.”
Bruce has claimed on his website that the government is against this project and has taken him to court over 30 times. He was denied the permit to build the shelter because “there is a psychology against shelters.” Bruce went ahead and made the private doomsday bunker anyway as he considered “it was a matter of life and death.”
The fire officials consider this a hazard and want it shut down for public safety. They want to weld the doors shut and Bruce responds, “I’ll take whatever it takes to knock the weld back off.”
Bruce has plenty of allies who support his cause as well. He holds work weekends at the private doomsday bunker for other survivalists to come and volunteer to ensure them a spot in The Ark Two. In 2015 The Canadian Survival & Meeting expo held a gathering on the property, and one of the chief draws of the event was a tour of the bunker.
“When you go inside the bunker for the first time, it is a different planet, it’s like you’re on Mars,” event organizer Che Bodhi told to Global News Canada. “When you hear about this concept of 42 school busses underground, to fathom it is nothing compared to going in and actually seeing it…It’s crazy in there.”
You can see the tour in the video below:
