Being a James Bond villain requires planning, bad childhood memories, and LOTS of money. After all, building an elaborate base to suit your evil intentions is never cheap.

But how much that would cost has probably never occurred to many… at least until now. Economics students at Lehigh University have calculated the estimated price of an evil hideout and arrived at the staggering figure of £11.25 billion, plus annual running costs of £9.5 million.

(Related story: How much would it cost to build a Death Star)
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The students who run the business blog Centives also calculated the cost of the Death Star earlier this year.

First, they added the price of a plot of land on a volcanic slope (£2.4 million) to the value of a real building of similar size (they appropriately chose the MI6 building, which cost £153 million).

Such a building would need to be extensively spruced up in the style of Changing Rooms. For example, Blofeld’s volcano hideout in You Only Live Twice (the definitive base for the Bond villains) featured a helipad and a huge retractable “crater lake” that opened up to reveal a secret missile base. Oh, and a fully functioning monorail.

The scientists looked for a comparable engineering feat in the real world and developed the Channel Tunnel, which cost more than £11 billion to build.

Of course, no hideout is complete without a small army to defend it and “shoot dangerously close to 007 as he walks past.” The Seychelles military, which consists of around 200 men and an air force, costs £8.9 million annually.

The final important touches have also been taken into account: that’s twenty Piranhas for £190 and a luxury swivel chair for £4,400.

They also factored in a super-henchman (think Jaws or Oddjob) by calculating the average salary a former special forces thug can earn in the private sector – around £100,000.

Apparently there are currently 35 people in the world who have enough money to build such a base – including Bill Gates and Warren Buffett.

If we had that much money, a rogue base would be at the top of our shopping list…