Photos: Warner Brothers Studios

My Dream Pandemic Bunker Is Lex Luthor’s Lair From 1978’s ‘Superman’

It’s the perfect end-of-the-world hideout

Lex Luthor (Gene Hackman): “Miss Teschmacher, how many girls do you know who have a Park Avenue address like this one?” Miss Teschmacher (Valerie Perrine): “A Park Avenue address? Two hundred feet below?”

I am self-isolating in a 500-square-foot one-bedroom apartment in Harlem that I rent. I do not have a country home or a beach house. I frequently fantasize about being rich and being able to afford a fancy luxury bunker. I am a good little capitalist, raised from birth to consume and covet.

In fact, one of my favorite things to do is read articles about billionaires fleeing to private islands or hermetically-sealed pleasure tombs where they can wait out the end of the world in comfort.

There was a time I use to make fun of doomsday preppers, but no more. To be fair, I could have planned for the apocalypse a little better. I have one too many cans of New England Clam Chowder.

But preppers don’t usually have the budgets the size of a small nation’s GDP. They’re mostly people with modest incomes who just have a really intense distrust of those in power. A subculture of humble Noahs. Well, now the super-wealthy have joined their ranks. I don’t know if we want billionaires and their broods re-populating the Earth. America is a slot machine and those who win the jackpot aren’t always the, uh, best.

Anyway, I am neither a prepper nor affluent. I’m just an average person praying that his elderly mother in Texas doesn’t get sick. So I spend a lot of time sitting on my couch, listening to nonstop ambulance sirens outside my window, and dreaming about my ideal pandemic bunker. My pre-pandemic ‘what if’ daydreams use to be “Where would I travel is money was no object” and now they’re mostly “What high-end survivalist shelter do I want?”

My friends, I have an answer. I want to spend the duration of this pandemic living in Lex Luthor’s underground lair from 1978’s Superman.