Stupid American Tricks: Why We Don’t Have Shelters for a Nuclear War
Don’t worry, our oligarchs will be safe
I gotta say, all this commentary about whether or not Vladimir Putin will use his nukes certainly brings back memories for this baby boomer.
I remember the drills in elementary and junior high school. When the siren sounded, we were supposed to dive under our desks or go into the hallway and ball up. The chances of that being helpful were slim and none, since we’d either be burned to a crisp or bald from radiation poisoning.
In 1962 my family lived in rural Rising Sun, Maryland. The president of the local bank was head of the KKK chapter, the town doctor had a steamy affair with his nurse, and the son of the owner of the Ford dealership was my nemesis. The town was also a few miles away from a Naval Training Center, and during the Cuban Missile Crisis we were all afraid it would be on the Soviet list of places to bomb.
After our nuclear preparedness drills we’d all be lined up on the football field so the teachers could count how many of us survived. I’m sure the nuclear ash covering the area would have been considered just an inconvenience.
With the doctrine of mutual assured destruction in place by the mid sixties, the school drills went away. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara successfully advocated for changing U.S. nuke strategy away from taking out military bases and infrastructure in favor of flattening 400 or so cities.
During the early sixties there was talk of building underground public nuclear shelters in big urban areas like the Europeans and Soviets were doing. That idea was dashed after congresscritters under the influence of the nascent John Birch Society decided that public funding for such an endeavor was just another example of the creeping communism taking over the country.
The Kennedy administration decided to encourage private development of individual shelters and establish dedicated spaces within existing public structures–mostly office building basements or underground parking garages. These spaces were mostly a joke, but handing out Geiger counters to local authorities made it seem like something was being done.
Cut to the twenty-first century, where movies are showing people gathered for a last family meal –as in Don’t Look Up– in the face of a certain apocalypse. The idea was to give thanks and pray before “dying neighborly,” a phrase coined by poet and writer Langston Hughes in 1965.
The idea of public spaces designated as safe havens in the event of a nuclear attack has faded away, as scientists have gamed out an increasingly grim post-nuclear timeline. Although a significant portion of the population would perish in very short order, the impact of soot and ash in the atmosphere would lead to a nuclear winter. It wouldn’t just be colder, it would be drier. Agricultural production would be impossible for two to five years. So the chances are good most of the survivors would either starve to death or die from the consequences of a societal collapse.
Bunkering down…As the rich have gotten richer (and richer.. … and richer) simpler survivalist shelters have given way to ever larger facilities. There’s even the possibility of profit involved.
One such enterprise is the Survival Condo in Kansas, an Atlas ICBM missile silo converted into a 15-story underground bunker. Here are the particulars:
Spacious condos with many amenities including a community swimming pool, dog walking park, rock climbing wall, theater, and even a general store are all protected by walls that are 2.5 – 9 feet thick.
Units come provisioned with a five-year supply of freeze-dried and dehydrated survival food per person.
The air supply for the entire facility is filtered by Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical (NBC) filters.
A three-source (primary plus two backups) water supply and reservoir system ensures the water supply is safe for consumption.
There’s also a three-source (primary plus two backups) electric supply, a military grade security system with defensive devices that are both automated and manually operated.
There are two floors of hydroponic gardens providing fresh produce and an aquaculture system enabling fish harvesting. .
Penthouse units inside the property start at $4 million, the full-floor units cost $3 million and the half-floor units start at $1.5 million.
In Germany, there’s the Vivos Europa One, a 76-acre above and below ground hardened facility capable of withstanding a nuclear blast, a direct airliner crash, biological and chemical agents, massive shock waves, earthquakes, electro-magnetic pulses, flooding, and virtually any armed attack. Helicopters owned by the company can be deployed to escort residents from the nearby airports to the luxury bunker.
A similar facility in New Zealand was the destination for Silicon Valley executives fleeing the coronavirus in 2020. San Diegan Robert Vicino, CEO of the group, is building a global community of many such apocalypse bunkers.
There is an amazing excerpt from Mark O’Connell’s book, Notes from an Apocalypse: A Personal Journey to the End of the World and Back, published in the Guardian a couple of years back:
The question I needed to ask myself, Vicino said, is which group I wanted to be in when it all went down, when whatever was going to happen happened. When the asteroid landed. When the lights went out. When the economy crashed for good. When, for whatever reason, in whatever way, the whole setup went irrevocably tits up, as it unquestionably would. Did I want to be out there, trying to get in?
Because if I thought I was going to be able to get past the armed guards Vivos would has stationed at all the property’s perimeters, good luck to me. I was going to be out there, and you know who was going to be out there with me? A whole lot of other people, and not a lot of food. And it was a known fact, historically, that after 21 days without food, people will resort to cannibalism.
“There’s going to be gangs roaming,” he said. “Cannibals in great numbers. Raping. Pillaging. The have-nots coming after the haves for everything they’ve got. And my question to you is, do you want your daughters to live through that?”
Companies that build individualized bunkers are reporting an increase in sales since the invasion of Ukraine, according to Business Insider.
According to Gary Lynch — the general manager of Texas-based Rising S Company, which specializes in survival shelters — he has received an uptick in phone calls requesting information about the company's underground bunkers since Russia invaded Ukraine.
Lynch provided Insider with documentation showing that his company sold five bunkers on February 24, at prices ranging from $70,000 to $240,000. He said Rising S Company typically sells anywhere from two to six bunkers a month, and that the winter is usually a slow season.
The article concludes with commentary by Dr. Chad Huddleston, an instructor at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, who studies “preppers.”
While the wealthy are getting into bunkers and survival condos, he says, non-wealthy survivalists don’t place much stock in this sort of investment.
Huddleston added that his contacts within the prepping community are highly "practical" and pessimistic about surviving an event as cataclysmic as widespread nuclear war. Rather than saving up for shelter options, most prepare "death bags" for such an occasion.
"Basically their thoughts are, 'If shit gets really bad, I'm just going to pop these pills and drink whiskey and watch it all burn. Who wants to live in a nuclear wasteland?'" he said.
The survivalist ethic is built upon the foundations of individualism and includes mostly dedicated right wingers. Having (mostly) successfully prevented society from taking preventative measures in a variety of areas, they’re busy creating environments that will protect “worthy” people like themselves,
As it is with too many things these days, it all boils down to “me, me, me” vs. “we, we, we.”
Email me at WritetoDougPorter@Gmail.com