“The world is a very scary place right now, especially for people of means; they feel cornered and threatened,” said Tom Gaffney, the president of Gaffco Ballistics, which has installed a number of safe rooms around New York City. “When you have so much to lose, and you can afford to, you put a premium on your safety.”

Safe rooms were popularized as “panic rooms” by the director David Fincher’s 2002 thriller of that name — one that the screenwriter David Koepp has admitted he made up because “safe room” did not carry quite the same drama at the box office.

“Panic Room” opens with the actress Jodie Foster touring a gorgeous brownstone on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, where she notices an uneven wall and is ushered into a hidden vault of concrete, closed-circuit televisions and a bare toilet better suited to a prison, which the room, of course, becomes. A similarly bleak model has played a minor part in the BBC hit “The Honorable Woman,” where Maggie Gyllenhaal beds down in a bunker behind a hidden panel.

The reality of today’s safe rooms is far cozier, and, rather than behind fake bookcases or trap doors, they tend to hide in plain sight. If there are cinder blocks, they are covered by mahogany paneling or smooth plaster, sandwiched between steel plates and Kevlar sheets. Some people fortify bathrooms or closets, others reinforce entire bedroom suites.