Las Vegas Bomb Shelter for Sale: Luxurious Blast From the Past

While "unique" is probably the most overused word in real estate listings, this five-bedroom, six-bath Las Vegas home just blocks from the Strip delivers on that while still managing to be one of those trendy luxury doomsday bunkers. The luxuries in this case are 1970s vintage, though -- hot tub, outdoor barbecue, intercom, large master bath -- and actually date from kind of late in the era of Cold War paranoia that started driving people to build nuclear bomb shelters back in the 1950s.

By the late 1960s, though, the question seemed to change from "How to survive a nuclear holocaust?" to "What kind of world you be living in if you did?" And this bifurcated two-story home -- part above-ground and part below -- answers that question with an attempt, CNNMoney tells us, to reproduce the above-ground world in its bomb shelter basement, complete with faux lawn, trees and shrubs, lighting that simulates the changing light over the course of a day, and murals of idealized landscapes. So if the worst happens, why would you ever need to go outside? And in that respect, this home listing for $1.6 million may not be so different from the stagy and hermetic hotels and casinos of today's Las Vegas.

It also anticipates the doomsday bunkers that fascinate so many nowadays with a promise of survival over the long haul. The bomb shelters of the late '50s were grim little cellars stocked with just enough canned goods, crackers and hard cheese to last for a few weeks past the initial annihilation. Who knew what you would do after that? Like the luxe bunkers being marketed now, though, this home seems built on the premise that it might actually be OK if we have to exist down there for a very long time.

The photos from the listing of this bank-owned property (bombproof but, alas, not foreclosure-proof) are shown in the below gallery, and they're a little dim and hastily composed. A brighter look at this doomsday bunker has since emerged in this article from the Las Vegas Journal.

DOOMSDAY BUNKER WITH LAS VEGAS LUXURY:

More about doomsday bunkers:
How Doomsday Real Estate Is Surviving and Thriving After 'The Apocalypse'
Luxury Doomsday Bunkers Promise Survival -- and Pampering
Man Makes 'Doomsday Bunker' Out of Stolen Trailers, Police Say

More on AOL Real Estate:
Find out how to calculate mortgage payments.
Find homes for sale in your area.
Find foreclosures in your area.
Find homes for rent.

Follow us on Twitter at @AOLRealEstate or connect with AOL Real Estate on Facebook.