A missile silo converted into a 15-storey luxury subterranean apartment complex could be a taste of what lies in store in cities around the world

Tucked away among cornfields in the midwestern United States, a military-grade chainlink fence surrounds a verdant berm on an otherwise empty plot of land. It is guarded by a camouflaged lookout with an assault rifle. Underneath this unassuming hill is a 15-storey inverted luxury tower block called the Survival Condo – and it could be a portend of future private underground developments in cities the world over.

Stretching 60 metres below the surface, the Kansas silo was one of 72 “hardened” missile structures built during the cold war to protect a ballistic missile with a nuclear payload one hundred times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Nagasaki.