The Cost of a Supervillain Lair
March 12, 2012 in Editorial, Top
As any good James Bond villain knows, before you start conquering the world you have to have an evil lair to plot and scheme from. After all, where is the fun in pulling off the perfect plan if you can’t laugh about it from a black leather chair in an undisclosed area?
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Name: Ernst Stavro Blofeld Organisation: SPECTRE Hobbies: World Domination |
Before you start building, you need a location. Now downtown Tokyo is fine or perhaps a charming flat in Brooklyn…. but wouldn’t you prefer a nice estate on the side of a volcano? This should set you back $3.95 million.
Assuming that a lava free spot can be found, how much would the base itself cost? Depends on what you’re after but the Secret Service MI6 building including special requirements for instance came to $240,680,720
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Name: Secret Intelligence Service Building Location: London, UK Cost: £152.6million |
An evil lair is equal parts location and awesome engineering. Whether it be underwater, in a volcano, or on the moon it’s going to be somewhere unexpected and cool. Now the lair could be built anywhere, so as an estimated cost of some cool engineering we’re adding the cost of the Channel Tunnel; at 31.4 miles long and underwater it just says evil lair material for £11,000,000,000 or $17,389,900,000
Having a base and location is all well and good, but someone needs to be inside shooting dangerously close to 007 as he runs past. The military of the Seychelles includes an air force and consists of 200 people at $14.85m per year. This sounds pretty reasonable for an evil regime with enough grunts to be shot down by heroes.
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“200 henchmen? How insulting” |
Final additions? Twenty piranhas will set you back $300, the awesome chair $7,100, and a superhenchman for $157,860, from wages that ex-special forces can earn in the private sector.
Altogether then? $17.635 billion startup plus $15.007 million annual running costs.
Which is a lot more money than the estimated £29,946 James Bond could expect for his salary.
And the scary thing? There are 35 people in the world right now who can buy their generic super villain base without even having to save up.
Now all that is needed is an evil super-weapon to take over the world.
http://www.centives.net/S/2012/how-much-would-it-cost-to-build-the-death-star/
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Bizarre article.
Did you include the cost of the girlfriend? That could easily triple the cost.
I think you’ve over-estimated it a bit… the Norwegians built one for just £320m and are selling it off for just £11m. but I guess second hand evil lairs just aren’t the done thing:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2157115/Bond-super-villain-yard-sale-Secret-Norwegian-submarine-base-market-11m-need-sub.html
I liked the old subway tunnel idea Lex Luthor had in the original Superman movie. Renovations may have cost a fortune…but I doubt Lex worried about getting all the necessary permits. Plus, plugging into the Metropolis power grid probably saved a ton of money on electricity!
I’d like to think that any true super-villain has the dignity to pay for his own electricity. How does one expect to take over the world if you have to mooch of off other people’s utilities?
But can you really be considered a good super villain if you aren’t stealing everything you can, utilities included?