Indian Creek Village, known as the “Billionaire Bunker,” isn’t just another gated community. It’s the ultimate fortress for the ultrarich. Nestled in South Florida’s Biscayne Bay, this private island is where some of the world’s wealthiest people, including Jeff Bezos and Tom Brady, have decided to stake their claim. But living here isn’t just about luxury. It’s about security and lots of it.

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You can’t just stroll onto Indian Creek. Not a chance. The island is locked down with a high-tech security system that’s straight out of a spy movie. “The wealthier you become, the more you want perfect security,” Setha Low, director of the Public Space Research Group at CUNY, told Business Insider recently. And Indian Creek delivers. An Israeli-designed radar system rings the island. It’s a system that can detect anyone approaching half a mile away. Cameras are everywhere: hidden in hedges, mounted on poles and linked to a command center that monitors every move.

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The police force here? They’re more like personal bodyguards for the residents. With 19 officers for just 89 residents, Indian Creek has a cop-to-citizen ratio that makes New York City look understaffed. And these aren’t your average officers. They’re trained in tactical operations and armed with fully automatic weapons. They also spend most of their time patrolling the island’s perimeter, ensuring no one gets too close.

Indian Creek wasn’t always a billionaire’s playground. The island was dredged from Biscayne Bay in 1928 and officially became a village in 1939. It was originally designed to mimic the English countryside, with sprawling lawns and a golf course covering over 80% of the island. It was a refuge for wealthy white gentiles, with early residents like vacuum king William Henry Hoover and department store magnate Frank Woolworth. The place had its ways of keeping people out – especially Jewish buyers, who were excluded by running the island’s utilities through a segregated country club. While those old barriers are gone, Indian Creek has kept its exclusive vibe, evolving into a fortress for the world’s richest, where the wealthy can live in seclusion, away from the rest of us.

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These days, Indian Creek isn’t just about keeping people out. It’s about keeping the wealth in. The island’s properties are worth nearly $1 billion collectively and prices keep climbing, especially since Jeff Bezos moved in. His arrival alone added a whopping $199 billion to the island’s net worth, sending property values through the roof. “People’s price expectations just jumped drastically,” said real estate agent Marko Gojanovic.

But the island’s obsession with security has a cost. Sure, it’s about the millions spent on technology and personnel. But it’s also about the growing divide between the haves and the have-nots. “Security has become a really big concern for billionaires now, because there’s never been more talk about the divide between the haves and the have-nots,” Brian Daniel, who runs the Celebrity Personal Assistant Network, told Business Insider. The wealth gap has never been wider. The rich are doing everything they can to keep themselves insulated from the rest of the world.

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Indian Creek might be the most extreme example, but it’s part of a larger trend. More and more Americans are retreating into “secured communities,” building higher walls to keep the outside world at bay. But as Low pointed out, “The more you enclose yourself, the more you’re reminding yourself of a sense of risk.”

For the residents of Indian Creek, the price of paradise is constant vigilance. Every boat that gets too close, every construction worker that steps onto the island, is a potential threat. And with wealth comes the fear that someone might want to take it away. It’s a gilded cage, but still a cage.

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