A Bond villain’s lair has a shorter life expectancy than the henchmen inside it. Sooner or later it explodes, sinks or melts, and we would like to know who is paying.
So we ran the insurance claims. Each lair below gets a fault split between the owner, Bond and anyone else who showed up with missiles. Fault covers bad design, bad decisions and personally pressing the button. The destruction is canon. The percentages are ours, and no insurer would touch these people. They’re ranked from the smallest owner share to the largest. Spoilers for most of the series, since the ending is the whole point.
12 to 9: Act of Bond
12. Atlantis, The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)
Stromberg’s underwater estate went down because the Pentagon ordered the USS Wayne to torpedo it, and Bond barely got Anya out first in an escape pod. Stromberg had already been shot at his own dining table. In fairness to the owner, very few home designs are torpedo-proof.
Fault: Stromberg 10%, Bond 20%, US Navy 70%.
11. Safin’s Island, No Time to Die (2021)
The island’s old missile silos had blast-resistant doors, which is excellent design right up until a guest finds the controls. Bond opened them so missiles from the Royal Navy’s HMS Dragon could reach the nanobot factory, and Safin spent his last minutes making sure Bond never left. The doors did their job. The guest list did not.
Fault: Safin 20%, Bond 30%, Royal Navy 50%.
10. Carver’s Stealth Ship, Tomorrow Never Dies (1997)
Elliot Carver’s floating headquarters was built to be invisible to radar, which works right up until someone blows a hole in it. Bond set off an explosive in the hull, the ship appeared on Royal Navy screens, and HMS Bedford opened fire while Wai Lin stopped the engines. Then Bond trapped Stamper in the firing mechanism of the stolen missile and dove clear with Wai Lin as the missile exploded and took the ship with it.
Fault: Carver 25%, Bond 40%, Royal Navy 20%, Wai Lin 15%.
9. The Liparus, The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)
Stromberg’s supertanker swallowed submarines whole and stored them, crews included, in its own hold. That meant hosting three captured submarine crews under the same roof as the missile controls. Bond broke them out, the battle went badly for the home team, and the tanker exploded and sank. Never store your hostages and your armoury on the same floor.
Fault: Stromberg 30%, Bond 40%, the freed submarine crews 30%.
8 to 5: Shared liability
8. Piz Gloria, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969)
Blofeld’s Alpine clinic was destroyed in a helicopter raid by Draco and his crime syndicate, with grenades and flamethrowers, after Blofeld kidnapped Draco’s daughter. The building was fine. The tenant relations were not. Kidnapping the only daughter of a man with access to a fleet of helicopters is a planning failure, not a construction one.
Fault: Blofeld 40%, Bond 20%, the Unione Corse 40%.
7. Trevelyan’s Satellite Dish, GoldenEye (1995)
Trevelyan’s Cuban base had one indispensable programmer, Boris, and Boris had a nervous habit of clicking pens. The pen he was clicking was Bond’s, and it was a grenade. Bond knocked it into spilled chemicals and the control room went up. Then Bond climbed the antenna cradle, jammed its gears so Boris couldn’t win back the satellite, and dropped Trevelyan into the dish before the sabotaged cradle exploded and came down on top of him. Trevelyan was a former 006. He should have checked the pens.
Fault: Trevelyan 40%, Bond 40%, Boris 15%, Natalya 5%.
6. Drax’s Space Station, Moonraker (1979)
The station’s secrecy depended on one radar jamming system. Bond and Holly switched it off, Earth could suddenly see a space station that wasn’t supposed to exist, and the US sent up a squad of space Marines for a laser battle. The station broke apart during the fight.
Fault: Drax 45%, Bond 35%, US space Marines 20%.
5. Crab Key, Dr. No (1962)
Dr. No ran a nuclear reactor under his island and let anyone in a radiation suit walk up to the controls. Bond borrowed a suit, sabotaged the reactor, and the base went up in a chain of explosions. Dr. No ended up in his own coolant pool. A radiation suit should not also count as a security pass.
Fault: Dr. No 55%, Bond 45%.
4 to 1: Owner error
4. Blofeld’s Crater, Spectre (2015)
Blofeld built a high-tech compound in the middle of the Sahara with at least one fuel line within easy shooting distance of his own guests. Once Bond’s exploding watch, thrown by Madeleine, got him out of the chair, Bond shot the fuel line on the way out and the whole complex went up in a fireball.
Fault: Blofeld 70%, Bond 25%, Q Branch 5%.
Production note: the real explosion, filmed near Erfoud in Morocco, set a Guinness World Record for the largest film stunt explosion.
3. Scaramanga’s Island, The Man with the Golden Gun (1974)
Scaramanga’s solar plant ran on a vat of liquid helium that could take down the whole island if anything went wrong. Something went wrong. His security chief Kra fell in during a scuffle with Goodnight, the temperature spiraled out of control, and the plant destroyed itself while Bond grabbed the Solex and ran. One man falling into the cooling system should not cost you an island.
Fault: Scaramanga 75%, Goodnight 20%, Bond 5%.
2. Graves’s Ice Palace, Die Another Day (2002)
Gustav Graves owned a palace made of ice and a satellite that focuses the sun into a heat beam. He then used the beam to melt the palace with Jinx locked inside. It melted. Nobody else needed to be involved.
Fault: Graves 95%, Bond 5% for driving back in to get her.
1. Blofeld’s Volcano, You Only Live Twice (1967)
The greatest lair ever built, and the owner had it fitted with a self-destruct system. Tanaka’s ninjas stormed the crater and Bond blew up the rocket before it could reach its target. Blofeld didn’t fight for his house. He started the self-destruct and left. He spent a fortune hollowing out a volcano, then blew it up himself to avoid losing an argument.
Fault: Blofeld 100%.
The adjuster’s report
Add it up and the owners carry most of the blame. Bond is usually the trigger, but these lairs came with unguarded reactors, reachable fuel lines, a programmer playing with a grenade and, in the worst case, a button marked self-destruct. The best-defended villain on this list is the one who got torpedoed by the US Navy, which tells you everything.
Goodnight gets 20%. Blofeld gets 100%.