When my brother Joe handed me the AS DVDs for a Christmas present and before I began to fully comprehend what Ayn Rand was all about, I considered it to be near future science fiction written during 1957. So I took that "ray screen" in stride. After all, Flash Gordon was shooting "ray guns" during the 1930s.
I took that "in theory" question in stride for science fiction also.

There was no "ray screen" in the 1950s either. It is fiction. The Valley in Atlas Shrugged was conceived to show how, in the fictional context of the novel, how rational individuals can interact with each other. It was not a call, "in theory" or otherwise, to build a utopian escape in the middle of earth's "people's states".

"term2" you are kind of describing my current retirement, although I don't consider myself wealthy (perhaps a 10%'er, maybe at least a 20%’er?) I owe nobody anything, and I can do and buy anything I need, and even mostly anything I want. I probably still have a few bucks that I saved from my paper route, pulling weeds, or bussing tables and washing dishes. For sure I am worth a lot more dead, fully owning everything I have, don’t tell the kids. I find that even those that have a whole lot less than I, are quite satisfied with what they have. Of my 30 "coffee group retires" I am probably the most wealthy, but even the poorest seem to be extremely satisfied with where they are in life. They mostly grew up here, I didn’t. I’m talking the difference between living on the lake in over a million dollar home, to living in a prefab or a double-wide on an acre of land on an unpaved street back in the woods. Thinking of everything that's happened in my last 2-1/2 years since I moved over here to Nine Mile Falls I am perhaps already living in Galt's Gulch, or a reasonable facsimile thereof. I fish mostly, as do most of the others on occasion. Most of them are more into hunting Turkey, Pheasant, Quail, Deer, Bear, Moose, Cougar, Wolf, Grizzly, Badger, Coyotes, Elk, Marmot, Otter, Rabbit, Raccoon, Skunk, Squirrel, Weasel, etc. Did I mention Cougars? About a week ago one the guys game cameras took a photo of 5 Cougars at the watering hole. The last animal I shot was a man, actually lots of them (not including the thousands my 8” artillery and 175mm guns took down), precisely as my government taught and instructed me to do. Yah, I think I just might be living the rest of my life in Galt’s Gulch.

“term2”, what you determines to be “independently wealthy” or “willing to live a relatively minute lifestyle” might be completely different than what you perceive today compared to tomorrow. It definitely was for me. My biggest downfall is stamina, finding it hard to catch my breath. I’d even trade a portion of my fortune for better health so I too could go out and trudge through the mountains and wilderness for hours just to kill something again. My advice to youngsters that I meet (and like) is (1) Don’t Smoke”, (2) Save Your Money. And now (3) Take Care of Your Health. You don’t have to be rich to be rich to live in the Gulch, you just have to be satisfied with what you have.

To me it brings up the thought of Muslim communities starting up around the world. The only difference I see is if you flaunt it the government leaves you alone. If you are quite about they shut you down.

If given items 2-3 and limited to your items 4-6, I'd say that hundreds of millions would be adequate, but to expand and flourish that investment would have to produce significant dividends to be reinvested. Bill Gates (or any of the Forbes 400) could have done this with pocket change if he was a leader and believed in the free market.
However, I think your #4 is too size limited to be successful at more than a resort for the rich. There has to be room for tens of thousands of producers and their children and grandchildren, and for new technology development safely separated from living space and food production, and for a defensive military force to defend freedom from those who want to plunder and loot it.

Who among the Forbes 400 would be most likely to take such a risk in defense of western culture, free markets, and individual liberty?
Maybe there's need for a research project to find Midas.
The upside for Midas is unlimited.

A short term solution that was fine for the book, but I don't think it rational for the existing reality.

Hide in plain sight. That's the technology feat that is yet unknown afaik. (By definition it must remain unknown;^)
That is a short term solution if it's possible.

1 Gotta have lotsa billions..
#2 Gotta have lotsa dedicated persons willing to work their butts off.
#3 Rather than mysteriously appearing and talking the right people to go along (There are fewer today than in '60) State the premise (1 paragraph should do) and advertise the hell out of it.
#4 Find a privately owned island in the tropics. Big enough for a good sized landing strip and purchase it.
#5 Create a village. (No thatch roofed yurts) with modern apartments, condos, and free standers.
#6 Create a modern port, fully equipped to do business.
And that's just for starters.
So, I would say, not possible at this time.

Isnt there a cruise ship that offers residences, and stays no more than the residency requirement for the ports it stays at ( some number of months a year). You buy a partial ownership and your address IS the ship. I think its called ResidenceSea or something like that.

I don't think cryptocurrency is a very good way to build a reality based community. I think something real and tangible like gold or silver should be the fiscal base.

It has to be small enough so as not to be instantly targeted like Ruby Ridge or Waco. Mormons have tried this, as well as a religious group I think in Oregon (the Baghwan, or something like that). The government took that one down too.
Could you do a microgulch with no more than perhaps 50 people, probably.

You cause me to dino analogy recall reading how the original Disneyland was locked in by other Las Angeles properties (like the shores of an island) and could not expand.
Lesson learned, Disneyworld was built in the Florida boonies.

Living in plain sight requires very modest living that looks like surroundings. If the USA collapses economically, none of us would want to live at that depressed level.

Remember, the gulch in AS was all occupied by independently wealthy people who were willing to live a relatively minute lifestyle compared with what we enjoy today.

Maybe the secret is to NOT make a big gulch, but a series of micro-gulches that can hide in plain sight.

Hiding in plain sight is the answer so long as one does not want to be really extravagant and attract attention.

I agree that it is possible today in some remote place, at least until its successful and the close-by governments try to take it over. If it became really successful, the big governments would want it too.

A smaller island (~30,000 acres) would work as long as the Gulch could maintain friendly trade relations and was not blockaded during the battle for independence. Eventually the success of the Gulch would require space to expand though. For that reason I think a coastal section of a larger land mass might be preferable to an island, although expansion to a nearby land mass could also work if the residents could separate from their masters.

There is an attempt to build an artificial island-state within the region of economic interest of Fiji, and the Fiji government has given approval. The island would have complete autonomy, with cryptocurrency as its fiscal base.

While not quite a Galt's Gulch, the plan is for minimum government, a free market, and becoming a reliable offshore banking haven. The architecture is concrete and modular, so as population increases, new modules can be added.

In perspective, this sounds like the New Utopia plan, without the monarchy slant. Getting the financial base together has always been the problem for these type of plans. The failed New Utopia plan involved sale of bonds, which got the founders in trouble with the SEC. Anyone who tries to create a new artificial island state better have big money behind it, but it's theoretically possible.

Geographically, an artificial island would best survive in a shallow water environment. The problem with that is that nearly all shallow water globally is in the economic interest zone (200 miles offshore) of an existing nation.

There are some islands that currently fall under the control of an existing nation that might be purchased and given a degree of autonomy that would enable a Gulch. It's hard to find any that are unpopulated and not part of some environmentally controlled territory. Johnston Island, west of Hawaii, is a mess, with lots of toxic waste stored there. Wake Island has some reasonably good facilities, but is under feverish watch by environmentalist radicals. A more likely target might be some of the islands of a small nation like Tuvalu. The problem is how to avoid restrictive entanglements, or an unstable government that would view successful development of a Gulch as a target for takeover and plunder.

There was such a place, it was called New Hampshire. Before the Massachusetts libs came in and screwed it up.

Boo-hoo-hoo! I can't argue with any of that. :-)

In theory, of course.
Atlas Shrugged was published in 1957, the same year Sputnik first circled the earth.
Doubt Ayn Rand, the genius that she was, had any idea there would be so many spying eyes in the sky.
Me dino can now go to Google Maps to see an overhead photo of my home.

There are no islands free of government jurisdiction on planet earth. (Parts of Antarctica might qualify but the climate discourages settlement.) The only relatively quick way to get one is purchase and occupation of one with no indigenous population and buildup of military defensive force to keep it after declaring independence from the "foreign" government. You can be sure that the United Nations will declare the residents as terrorists. (I doubt that any island for sale would be large enough for a permanent Gulch. I'd want at least an area the size of a large metropolitan city, say 700 sq mi, 450,000 acres to be self sufficient with room enough to grow. )
Construction of a near earth space habitat using robotic mining of asteroids might be quicker than waiting for a planet, since such a planet would likely be claimed by earth-bound political bureaucracies.

But the gulch itself was in the middle of Colorado. They just did a good job disguising it. With more modern technology, could it not in theory be done?

It won't be in a gulch. The trick is finding an island free of any government's jurisdiction.
Or we could wait a few hundred years to find a planet in a healthy star's Goldilocks Zone.
https://www.vladi-private-islands.de/...