Fallout shelter?

Does any one have one? And if you do, what kind of supplies do you keep in there? And also did you built and design the shelter or did you buy one of those already made ones?

Thanks alot for the info!

Excellent question, I want to know too!!

the closest thing I have to fallout shelter is the buried 1000 gallon concrete septic tank out back..there are two manhole covers for access..
I have wondered; living within a few tens of miles of a couple of Airforce bases, what would I do if I saw (would I be able to?) a nuke go off and a shock wave approaching ; would I jump in the septic tank?

I still don't know. (and of course don't wanna know.)

My parents built their house in 1960, when fallout shelters were all the rage. Theirs is a little underground room built off of the basement. Used to be stocked with supplies, but now its stuffed with 45 years of junk.

peace

TedTheLed said:

the closest thing I have to fallout shelter is the buried 1000 gallon concrete septic tank out back..there are two manhole covers for access..

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Actually, there is a phenomena called "soil arching" where solid structures buried in soil stand higher odds of crumbling in a shockwave. So in the event of a nearby nuclear detonation you can do the thing where you stick your head between your knees and kiss your butt goodbye.

(Prefabricated blast shelters are made of corrugated material, which deforms in a dynamic environment, instead of crumbling.)

However, during a fallout situation, where you are safe from the blast but radiologically "hot" dust and material is raining down around you, a buried septic tank could be ideal. You would have to put a blockade near the entrance, as the radiation photons from fallout travel in a straight line and can penetrate several inches of earth and concrete.

And speaking of septic tanks, the one thing nobody ever really talks about during "duck and shelter" exercises is where you can go for your daily morning sit-down. Think about it, enclosed area, no running water, no sewage...? Personally I keep a Reliance brand portable commode in the garage with about 50 lbs. of cat litter and portable commode liners. In theory, you put a liner in the can, a sprinkle of cat litter, do your business, maybe throw a little more litter on top for good measure, bundle up your bag of gelatinous mass and toss it in the neighbor's yard...

I don't know if anyone here is a Usenet freak, but in the ebooks.technical group it is common to find old texts on building DIY blast and fallout shelters, how to stock them, how to make them look innocuous, etc. Great for the armchair survivalist, like me!!!

I remember trying to convince my parents that we needed a fallout shelter. Of course, I saw it as a potential clubhouse. I also remember the "duck and cover" drills in school and commercials on TV about the dangers of fallout. We even all had dog tags. I think Pittsburgh in the late '50's and early '60's was considered one of the prime targets.

Geoff

scott.cr said:

Actually, there is a phenomena called "soil arching" where solid structures buried in soil stand higher odds of crumbling in a shockwave. So in the event of a nearby nuclear detonation you can do the thing where you stick your head between your knees and kiss your butt goodbye.

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Actualy earth-arching IMPROVES the survivability of a shelter, it adds extra structure. As in the earth piled over the shelter makes an arch which transferes shock and loads around the shelter. Which is why the VC and NVA dirt tunnel complexes which were often unreinforced, or lined with simple timbers and sticks had such a high degree of survivability, to truly collapse them and kill the occupants, they had to be detonated from within by gas.

Google NWSS, or Nuclear War Survival Skills by Kearney. It's a free to the public PDF book and has loads of interesting information. Including real-world testing of various improvised bunkers that were set up around nuclear test sites.

My current home has one built off the basement ( was there when we bought the house). It's about 10 by 9 and the top is probably 2 feet underground. Looks like there used to be a tube exit outside, but it has been concreted in. I use it to hide my new fishing rods from the wife.

My girlfriend just told me that if we get married, our house has to have a bomb shelter. Not a fallout shelter, a BOMB shelter (she made this very clear).

I think she's a keeper

This thread is a bit on the funny side. I haven't heard talk about Fallout Shelters since the 50's For the most part it was a bit of a joke, if anyone thought that they were going to protect anyone in a nuclear blast or the resulting fallout unless you were located far enough away not to be impacted in the first place.

vtunderground Didn't it raise any suspicions to have such a strange request made? You might want to check to see what you're getting yourself into.

Brighteyez said:

vtunderground Didn't it raise any suspicions to have such a strange request made? You might want to check to see what you're getting yourself into.

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I don't know, but with a name like vtunderground, they sound like a perfect match.

AJ_Dual said:

Google NWSS, or Nuclear War Survival Skills by Kearney. It's a free to the public PDF book and has loads of interesting information. Including real-world testing of various improvised bunkers that were set up around nuclear test sites.

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Ah, another who has read the Oak ridge lab tests. Outstanding. Today's biggest nuclear threats are likely to come in the form of a terrorit nuke or an attack on a civil nuclear plant. We would likely not need the heavy blast protection that people wanted in the 50s, as we are not talking of thermonuclear devices in the megaton range. More likely an urban attack at a kiloton or so. Fallout from a small blast would be dirty, but would be short lived due to dispersion from weather etc. An attack on a nuclear plant would be a different story entirely. Proximity and wind direction are the primary factors.

these are a couple of my favorite cold war era sites that have some great info on just about everything.

http://www.conelrad.com/index.php

http://www.civildefensemuseum.com/


and this one actually has the original booklet illustrations for 1950's and 60's home fallout shelters:

http://www.1134.org/adventures/atomic/cold-war.html


cool stuff. if anyone else has some cool cold war era sites please post 'em.

I read a fiction book a couple years ago about a scientist who was really worried about a nuclear war, and had a bunker built. If I remember right, it was at least 30 feet below ground, in order to survive the initial blast and the shock wave that would have crushed the more shallow bunkers. There was also the added benefit of the thermal efficiency of the earth covering the bunker as well. The shallow bunkers were poor insulation against the following nuclear winter conditions. I think in the book, he had a huge propane tank buried as well, and a bicycle to generate electricity to power some batteries for light and other electrical needs. The book was fiction and didn't mention the storage area needed for food and toilet facilities, but as the main character was pretty well off, I would imagine the bunker was of sufficient size to hold about a year's worth of food, water, medicine, etc.


Again, it was a fictional book, but certainly gave me some ideas on what would be necessary to survive. I think basically I would be screwed trying to survive a close nuclear blast.

I believe there is a movie called: A Blast from the Past. You should look into it.

RadarGreg said:

I read a fiction book a couple years ago about a scientist who was really worried about a nuclear war, and had a bunker built. If I remember right, it was at least 30 feet below ground, in order to survive the initial blast and the shock wave that would have crushed the more shallow bunkers. There was also the added benefit of the thermal efficiency of the earth covering the bunker as well. The shallow bunkers were poor insulation against the following nuclear winter conditions. I think in the book, he had a huge propane tank buried as well, and a bicycle to generate electricity to power some batteries for light and other electrical needs. The book was fiction and didn't mention the storage area needed for food and toilet facilities, but as the main character was pretty well off, I would imagine the bunker was of sufficient size to hold about a year's worth of food, water, medicine, etc.


Again, it was a fictional book, but certainly gave me some ideas on what would be necessary to survive. I think basically I would be screwed trying to survive a close nuclear blast.

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Reminds me of Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut in which the main characters use a bicycle to circulate air through their shelter after someone drops Ice-9 in the ocean...

This brings up a question I do have about fallout shelters...what does one do about air when confined to a shelter for a long period of time?

AJ_Dual,

You beat me in your recommendation of Nuclear War Survival Skills by Kearney. Kearney is the real deal with a whole carreer behind him. The book is excellent in it's intended use and others. A good read.
The HTML version may be found here:

http://www.oism.org/nwss/

I am another who remembers the "duck and cover" drills at school in the 1950s. One of the things I recall was a drill where the entire elementary school evaced and actually walked 1/4 mile to a railroad track where we were told that in a nuke attack we would be picked up there by trains and taken out of the city. It all took so long that we probably would have been long dead.

I think some of the ridicule that "duck and cover" has been the brunt of in recent decades is a little one-sided. As in my example above with the trains, all of the ideas and plans might have been far from perfect but they were very thought provoking and had an impact on the population in that people made individual preparations that they otherwise would not have made AND it tended to bring us together and put us all closer to being on the same page regarding the times we were living in and the common threats we faced. In those ways "duck and cover" was a real success. I think it had a lifelong effect on me.

IMO it is also sad to think that today the powers that be would never think to tell the public to prepare for anything -- even though the last year has demonstrated graphically that today's city's infrastructure are much more fragile and prone to catastrophic failure than we like to think. (Katrina and the massive power blackout)

Sadly, today the govt will only say that THEY will take care of us in any emergency and with enough money they can make FEMA or whatever work right. Maybe they are right about the way we have changed. Not so much here at CPF, though.

I think fallout/bomb shelters are cool, even if you never use them for that. It's a good place to store things and to remember that sometimes, stuff happens -- and I just think they're cool.

EDIT

Chris201W said:

...This brings up a question I do have about fallout shelters...what does one do about air when confined to a shelter for a long period of time?

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I'm sure that the Kearney book [linked above] covers that. The FED had Kearney and guys like him try to improvise that and many other problems that would be common and then they wrote up instructions so that anyone could overcome them with the common items at hand.

The air pumps moved a high volume of air and were usually rope operated, IIRC. Check out the link -- I'm sure you'll find it.

vtunderground said:

My girlfriend just told me that if we get married, our house has to have a bomb shelter. Not a fallout shelter, a BOMB shelter (she made this very clear).

I think she's a keeper

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Jerry Henderson built an underground home in Las Vegas. Jerry is gone now, but the underground home is available to groups, for a fee. It's 16,000 square feet, and 25 feet underground. Think that would satisfy your girlfriend? By the way, it has a one bedroom guesthouse, also.

oldgrandpajack

has got to be the ultimate in underground homes:

(one thing I found intriguing is how he handled incoming water; here and there as I have also noticed, are holes where torrents of rain water go down and just never seem to resurface..he found these and made conduits in the house to conduct water to these fissures in the ground at it's lowest points..)

http://www.undergroundgardens.com/

Like the name implies, these gardens are underground. Working alone during his spare time and using only hand tools, Baldasare Forestiere spent some 40 years sculpting an underground complex consisting of:
A Network of Underground Rooms, niches, courts, patios and passageways numbering almost 100.
An Underground Garden Home consisting of kitchen, nook, living room, 2 bedrooms, library, bath, fish pond, and aquarium.
Arches and Stonework patterned after the catacombs of Ancient Rome.
An Auto Tunnel running the length of the gardens, almost 800 feet long!
A Chapel and Chapel Garden.
Baldasare adorned these areas with a unique variety of trees including Strawberry, Carob, Jujube, numerous citrus (many on one tree), Pomegranate, Mulberry, Date Palm, Avocado, Quince, and Persimmon
---

2 wee lil nuclear threats that come to mind...Iran & N. Korea? Besides a shelter doesn't neccessarily need to shelter you from bombs...Don't forget in a SHTF scenerio, you need protection from your ill prepared neighbors, local bad guys, and zombies trying to get to your water and food supply!

Shelter Info:

www.Disastershelters.net
www.americansaferoom.com
www.radiusdefense.com


Hope those links help,
Flavio
BugOutGearUSA.com
SHTF.com