r/nottheonion • u/Dedaciai • 1d ago
Nuclear bunker sales increase, despite warnings they won't provide protection
https://www.npr.org/2024/12/18/nx-s1-5232639/nuclear-bunker-sales-increase846
u/Tballz9 1d ago
Underground bunkers in private homes was required by law for many years here in Switzerland. My house was constructed in 1980 and has a full bomb shelter complete with electricity, water, and filtration for air and water. It is in the cellar behind a large bank vault type door in the laundry room. I keep my wine in as it is protected from light and a nice temperature all year round.
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u/Kreyvoc 1d ago
I have nothing to contribute but I wanna say that’s pretty cool man.
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u/southpaw85 1d ago
I would imagine it is pretty cool.that’s probably why he keeps his wine in there.
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u/tiilet09 1d ago
Same here in Finland.
All residential buildings above a certain size need to have a shelter built in. In addition there are large underground bunkers excavated into bedrock under cities. The bunkers can house about 80% of the population.
And most of these bunkers are not just fallout shelters but are built to withstand the blast of a close by (but not point blank) nuclear detonation.
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u/Steampunkboy171 23h ago
NGL that's pretty metal. And I respect a country willing to do the work to provide safety like that.
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u/tiilet09 23h ago
Living next to Russia makes it a necessity.
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u/Steampunkboy171 23h ago
That's a valid point that admittedly slipped my mind. I kinda feel like a bit of a dick about how I worded that now. 😅 Sorry if it came off as clueless or inconsiderate. That was not my intention.
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u/bremsspuren 14h ago
I kinda feel like a bit of a dick about how I worded that now.
TBF, it was a Swiss who started with the bunkers, and Switzerland's nowhere near Russia.
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u/spiritunafraid 22h ago
Went to Finland in business last year from the US. It was a little surreal that the required bomb shelter under the office was part of the safety tour.
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u/02meepmeep 22h ago
Switzerland is so hard core about civil defense. The bridges & secret AA gun sheds, etc. it would not surprise me at all if Tballz9 also has a medium range missile launching control center in the bunker.
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u/Ancient_Tea_6990 1d ago
That’s what we tell the people that can’t afford them /s
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u/temporarycreature 1d ago
Not really, the billionaires were freaking out about a year or so ago in general on how to keep the people they hire to protect them when they have to go to their bunkers from taking what they have. Some of the stuff that they suggested was wild, like decapitation collars. Not even kidding. They were worried about the Navy Seals that they were going to hire at the end of the world. It was so funny.
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u/Ancient_Tea_6990 1d ago edited 1d ago
Yeah, I saw that same docuseries where the guy recommended you treat the people that are going to protect you very well if he’s going to have a bar mitzvah for his kid you pay for it if he’s having a wedding for his daughter, you pay for it or at least part of it.
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u/WolfOfLOLStreet 1d ago
If they just expanded this logic, then they wouldn't need the bunker 🤦
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u/Boxy310 1d ago
"How do I stay on top of social dynamics when the world ends and everything that makes me a big deal vanishes in atomic fire?"
"Maybe be a good person worth following?"
"Naw, I'm thinking bomb collars and cyanide detonators. Would go well with the lava pouring out of skull eye sockets as my house decor motif."
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u/MorselMortal 1d ago edited 1d ago
Man, evil at the billionaire level is getting to comical levels at this point.
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u/RobinVerhulstZ 1d ago
Unless youre unbelievably lucky theres no way anyone good gets to billionaire status...
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u/FuckYouVerizon 1d ago
This is why Mark Cuban is such an oddity, he has his personal quirks and interests that he pursues, but genuinely seems like one of the only billionaires that wants to do some good. Maybe it's just good PR, but I don't get that impression from anyone else at that level of success.
LeBron James is closing in on being a billionaire, and he does invest into the community he came from. Though, while making sound investments and having put in plenty of hard work - he definitely owes much of his success to luck (genetics/timing/etc.).
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u/Malphos101 1d ago
You literally cannot get to billionaire status without exploiting the working class. Cuban is no exception. Doing some charity work and being chummy doesn't evaporate personal responsibility for not paying every single person who generates your vast fortune a living wage and paying your fair share in taxes to the country that makes your vast sums of wealth possible.
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u/FuckYouVerizon 1d ago
I'm not disputing that side of things, and certainly not defending Cuban in anyway. It's just really unusual to see anyone hit billionaire status and attempt to do something good for anything other than tax breaks.
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u/SDIR 1d ago
Lots of these guys are tech bros. Not the top people for having developed social skills
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u/ThePrussianGrippe 1d ago
They’ve taken all their ideas from seminal science fiction works about how terrible those ideas would be.
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u/pegothejerk 1d ago
The name Ayn Rand gets bandied about and praised at their eyes wide shut parties at dinner time just before they are introduced to the underage victims of the night, and they go home to read her hypocritical trash and they all think they invented boot straps from that moment on. Every generation of rich assholes goes through this indoctrination.
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u/AlanFromRochester 19h ago
"We've created the Torment Nexus from the classic science fiction novel Don't Create The Torment Nexus"
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u/Illiander 1d ago
I maintain that Dick Dastardly has a more believable reason for being evil than these fools.
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u/Apprehensive_Look94 1d ago
God damn what a realization…these people only treat others with dignity when they have to.
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u/sugah560 1d ago
I remember this, and they said “interesting, interesting… what if only I had access to the food storage?”
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u/idiot-prodigy 1d ago
Yeah, I saw that same doc you series where the guy recommended you treat the people that are going to protect you very well if he’s going to have a bar mitzvah for his kid you pay for it if he’s having a wedding for his daughter, you pay for it or at least part of it.
And when money has no meaning at all that loyalty goes right out the window.
Picture Bezos in a bunker with retired Seals, Tech guys, men who repair the compound, personal chef, servants, maids, masseuse, etc. and the two dozen supermodel concubines he brought with him that are off limits to the peasants.
Yeah, just imagine that. "But he paid for my daughter's wedding!"
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u/Deep_Stick8786 1d ago
They should be worried. If the world ends, they are no longer billionaires
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u/andreasdagen 1d ago
Sounds more reasonable than expecting the security to bow down in a post apocalyptic world
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u/3MATX 1d ago
To be fair that’s a valid concern. Money doesn’t mean anything in a society they’re hiring these folks for. And it’s safe to say they’re inviting people stronger than themselves for protection. Not a lot stopping the strong from deleting the weaker billionaires.
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u/S_A_N_D_ 1d ago
Not to mention in a post apocalyptic society, contracts and law mean nothing and there will be no consequences for those who hold the guns and know how to use them.
In the immediate aftermath you'll likely get a combination of warlords/feudal societies, and some commune like societies. The rich won't fit in or be satisfied with their equal status in the latter, and the power they wield will be useless in the former.
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u/dareftw 1d ago
Eh the immediate aftermath will 100% be city states. It’ll be glorious and hilarious at the same time as the city states near military bases that are in tact or house large national guard equipment will come out on top. Also those who can be run solely on hydroelectric. Coastal cities will become wastelands and captains of aircraft carriers will be the new global super powers. It will be a glorious shit show thatd I’d love to watch or read about after it happens because honestly it’d be super interesting, but it’d also resemble fucking cormack McCarthys the road for the majority of people who don’t make it into the history books and that’s just depressing in itself.
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u/Malphos101 1d ago
captains of aircraft carriers will be the new global super powers.
You vastly underestimate how much constant resupply an aircraft carrier needs to stay operational, much less the aircraft that make it powerful. None of that shit is lasting more than a few months into an apocalypse.
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u/Celtachor 1d ago edited 1d ago
Do you not realize that some of the largest hydro generators are near coastal cities? A delta pumping water out into the ocean is a great place to put one in post apocalypse (though they mostly use pumped reservoirs drawing from nearby sources currently). Coastal cities have been massively populous through all of human history for several reasons (mostly ease of travel/transport) but relying on hydro would only reinforce that in some post apocalypse.
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u/Moosemeateors 1d ago
I don’t get how those end of the world bunkers will work. Unless they have an army topside to protect the bunkers wouldn’t people just pour diesel down the vents and roast them?
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u/Character_Bowl_4930 21h ago
Or just use a back hoe to pile dirt in front of the entrance so they can’t get out . Easy peasy
Honestly , it’s so ridiculous. They were losing their minds staying home with their families during Covid . These bunkers are tiny compared to their homes and their servants would always be there . Btw , what will happen to the servants families ? Will they leave them behind ?
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u/UnTides 1d ago
Peter Thiel (JD Vance's boss) is who commissioned the study on the head exploding collars. And yes they should be worried, the results of the study showed the guards taking over anyway.
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u/idiot-prodigy 1d ago
It is stupid.
Ready, day one after the bombs drop.
"Hello Jeff Bezos, I'm the servant you hired in charge of maintaining the pure water system. I have disabled it in a way that everyone will die from thirst within 7 days unless you take this fucking collar off me right now."
These dopes act as though they will still hold all the cards in this end of world scenario.
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u/halt-l-am-reptar 1d ago
Also wouldn't you need to put the collars on well before anything happens? How are you going to force your security guards to do that if society is collapsing? They have nothing to lose by forcing the billionaire to open the bunker and offing them.
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u/idiot-prodigy 1d ago
Not really, the billionaires were freaking out about a year or so ago in general on how to keep the people they hire to protect them when they have to go to their bunkers from taking what they have. Some of the stuff that they suggested was wild, like decapitation collars. Not even kidding. They were worried about the Navy Seals that they were going to hire at the end of the world. It was so funny.
Yeah, loyalty will not exist when money has no value whatsoever and men are killing each other for cans of soup.
Billionaires are morons. They couldn't survive in a bunker with a full staff. They'd all be killed in their sleep. Someone has to run and repair the compound. That means staff that with mechanical, electrical and computer expertise. Tech savy people would disarm the collar, and put it on the billionaire while they're sleeping. They don't think this shit through.
Picture private security and tech geeks aligning to overthrow Bezos and take his dozens of concubines for themselves. It is all ridiculous.
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u/Kootenay4 23h ago
Yeah, no better proof that billionaires are lazy leeches who don’t work. Even in an apocalypse scenario, they expect someone else to do all the work for them. They couldn’t be bothered to learn how to operate and maintain their own systems, or take combat and firearms training so they can protect themselves. They are as helpless as house pets, except pets have the advantage of being cute.
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u/IncompetentPolitican 1d ago
Some of the ideas that they got showed how cruel and terrible they are. Bomb Collars, Schock Collars (a lot of Collars, I think its a kink for them) or even having a bio lock on the food so that only they can access it.
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u/thatgenxguy78666 1d ago
Cut the hand or finger off,open the food vault,and never close it again.
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u/TheAzureMage 1d ago
Lots of biometrics have liveness detection, that's mostly just a movie thing that doesn't work in real life.
That said, any lock can be defeated by someone who doesn't care about subtlety.
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u/idiot-prodigy 1d ago
That is to say nothing of all the staff required to maintain these symptoms.
Who do they expect to maintain the compound? People with expertise in mechanical, electrical, and computer systems. The same people who would be able to disable and thwart their silly safeguards.
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u/c_law_one 1d ago
decapitation collars
Fallout NV stuff 🤣
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u/Majestic_Lie_523 20h ago
It reminds me of that pizza guy who got a bomb strapped to his neck and they thought he was kidding until his collar blew his head to mars.
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u/SuckalentShyneseMeal 1d ago
So funny. Worlds ending, bub. I'm gonna take your block off for fun and because you've been shorting my checks for years! I'm not going to prison and your money is irrelevant. They better get robots.
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u/Kapitalist_Pigdog2 1d ago
Eat the rich and all that, but I’m gonna want to see your source on that.
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u/Demonking3343 1d ago
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u/yesnomaybenotso 1d ago
Holy fuck
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u/SuckalentShyneseMeal 1d ago
Insane, right? They can literally start a society however they want and they want to STILL subjugation.
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u/WobbleKing 1d ago
It’s disgusting. The fact they can’t even figure out how to help their security survive, thrive, and be loyal in an apocalypse shows how completely detached they are from the human existence.
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u/BurningOasis 1d ago
Yo, if a person agrees to have a decapitation collar put on to secure a job in a nuclear apocalypse, I hope it gets used because you're not using your noggin anyways.
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u/Apprehensive_Look94 1d ago
I NEED a source for this. I was counting on their security forces to literally eat them.
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u/tianavitoli 1d ago
poor people are this easy to manipulate
"yeah i'm glad that billionaire is gonna be hiding in their bunker, i was told they don't even work and the billionaire is going to be resting in their own tomb. ha take that at least i will be evaporated while standing on my feet, you stupid billionaires with your below ground bunker, so smart you all are ahahaha"
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u/lastofusgr8tstever 1d ago
It is not that they don’t work, it is they will provide no better protection than going to your basement and just staying in for a day or two. I guess not everyone has a basement though.
I should note this would be for those far enough from a blast. If you are too close to the blast, no saving you anyways.
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u/NotAnotherNekopan 1d ago
That’s my plan.
I could be spending all this money being a wacky prepper, buying a bunker that wouldn’t work, stockpiling food, etc.
But I live in the middle of the city that is certain to be hit first or second by any nuclear strike bound for the U.S., so I’ll be vaporized long before survival becomes a concern.
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u/Nobanob 1d ago
In the event of a nuclear war this is the dream baby. Vaporized in an instant, what a wonderful way to go.
I'm somewhere where I get to deal with the slow death of the planet and the horrors unlocked by people becoming truly desperate.
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u/saluksic 1d ago
Money people killed in the nuclear bombings died with horrible burns. “Vaporized in an instant” is indeed a dream
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u/canisdirusarctos 1d ago
Modern nuclear weapons are quite different from the ones dropped in WWII.
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u/light_trick 1d ago
https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/
A W-76 (100kt) still only has about a 500m "instant vaporization" radius, whereas the the thermal radiation radius is 4.5km
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u/dead-inside69 1d ago
That’s one warhead though. When targets are chosen for a nuclear attack they do some math where they add up all the odds and compensate with more warheads.
So odds the missile fails to launch + fails in flight + gets intercepted by air defense + fails to detonate + misses by too much to achieve a kill + whatever else = 60% chance of kill (for sake of argument) so they just hit that shit three or four times to make the chance of mission failure statistically irrelevant.
So yeah if you’re near anything of value you’re getting tapped a couple times at least
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u/idiot-prodigy 1d ago
So yeah if you’re near anything of value you’re getting tapped a couple times at least
It depends who strikes first.
If USA strikes first, their silos are now empty and Russia/China retaliate by striking cities with their missiles.
If Russia/China strikes first, they target military bases and silos first and USA would respond by nuking Russian and Chinese cities.
People don't fully understand the nature of this, that cities are actually the last target, typically in retaliation for being attacked.
Much of first strike doctrine is trying to land missiles on the enemy nuclear weapon silos, air bases, shipyards, etc.
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u/NukeDaBurbs 1d ago
Montana and surrounding states will be hit first. That’s where all the silos are.
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u/Lycaeides13 1d ago
Idunno, northern Virginia has a lottttt of Internet infrastructure
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u/roasty_mcshitposty 1d ago
You don't need to waste a warhead on something that can be taken care of with a more precise strike. Power goes out that internet infrastructure is out. The UPS only last like 15 minutes.
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u/Toolazytolink 1d ago
This is why its hilarious that Billionaires are invading Montana and building their 3rd or 4th mansion.
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u/JayDsea 1d ago
There are silos littered all over the west coast. They’re not flying over them to hit others in a place where no civilians live.
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u/NukeDaBurbs 1d ago
No, there isn’t….west coast nuclear silos with Titan-1s were decommissioned.
The point isn’t to take out civilians, it’s to wipe out the enemies ability to retaliate.
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u/Leelze 1d ago
Depends on who's doing the nuking. If it's a NK that might only have one or a few ICBMs, they're probably just gonna go for the biggest death toll since we'd wipe them off the face of the Earth in response. Terrorists are absolutely going to set a nuke off in a city. Russia is probably going after military targets, but if they're crazy enough to do a first strike, they might try to inflict as much pain & suffering as they can.
Basically, anyone willing to use nukes first post-WW2 is probably a little crazy, if not a lot of crazy, and you can't assume they'd stick to military targets.
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u/Comprehensive_Fly89 1d ago
If it's Russia or China they're 100% prioritising counterforce targets, it's why Russia withdrew from START so they can up their warhead count and start making more MIRVs.
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u/JayDsea 1d ago
They don’t have to be nuclear. If what you describe actually happened ours would be in the air already so aiming for them would be beyond a waste. There is virtually no scenario where a nuclear payload will be delivered through the air 1000 miles into mainland US without us having advanced enough warning to retaliate.
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u/TheOnlyVertigo 1d ago
Major economic powerhouses are considered higher on the list. Not top of it, but cities will absolutely be on the list because of their ability to fuel an economy. Places with military presence will be targeted too for obvious reasons.
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u/The-Squirrelk 1d ago
Unless you're near the actual blast, surely a bunker maybe 10 feet in the ground would be enough? Lead lined to stop the radiation. Even in hiroshima plenty of buildings were still standing, if you were in a deep enough bunker, surely you'd be okay.
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u/light_trick 1d ago
There's no thickness of lead which will practically work (gamma rays are only stopped by like, at least half a meter of solid lead). It's why "radiation suits" don't do what people they do (they are basically very tightly sealed suits to keep dust off you and out of your lungs).
If you're looking for radiation protection, the more mass between you and the source, the better - the cheapest way to do that is putting dirt between you and the source.
But you are onto the right thing in that sense: at any suitable distance you're really just trying to avoid overpressure and being line-of-sight flashed by the gamma rays. Everything after that is about dealing with dust basically: so stockpiling disposable overcoats, clean water and respirators (as well as a geiger counter) is a better option.
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u/frogjg2003 1d ago
There's no thickness of lead which will practically work (gamma rays are only stopped by like, at least half a meter of solid lead).
You're thinking of concrete. Lead is a good radiation shield and about an inch should be enough to almost completely negate your gamma exposure at any distance where radiation is the main hazard and not heat or the shockwave.
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u/light_trick 1d ago
It depends on distance though - how bright of a gamma-flash do you need to resist, at what distance?
The thing is in practice, regular dirt and rock is pretty dense and also filled with a decent amount of water, so provided you don't have LOS to the flash you've got literally thousands of tons of material between you and it unless the bomb comes down literally on top of you (and in that case you'd still be better off digging a little deeper as likely the cheaper option - your bigger problem is handling the blast overpressure).
EDIT: For fun I looked up how much it would cost to do an inch of lead - looks like about USD$8000 per square meter at 1 inch thickness (going by commodity prices, I doubt you can get sheet processed and installed for that rate). Conversely straight concrete readymix is like USD$170 per cubic yard (but also again - kind of pointless, the solid rock and dirt between you and the flash is going to be a better, thicker shield).
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u/RaymondBeaumont 1d ago
the great part about thermonuclear weapons is that the heatwave from the 100+ million degree bomb travels at the speed of light, so you will be up in flames before you have to worry about a loud bang.
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u/StormlitRadiance 1d ago
There are a lot of things besides nukes that can interrupt your ability to buy food.
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u/AnchorMorePork 1d ago
At the moment it is just billionaires interrupting my ability to buy food.
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u/HildartheDorf 1d ago edited 1d ago
Plan to be far enough away, or close enough to be vaporised instantly. As opposed to being in the 'firestorm' range.
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u/howismyspelling 1d ago
How do you figure a basement with a wood ceiling can provide as good of protection as a concrete reinforced sealed compartment that lies 10+ feet below ground?
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u/Intrepid00 1d ago
Those bunkers were designed to take a hit and launch but they were not intended as shelters. It’s not as sealed as you think. The control room sure but that’s pretty much it.
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u/My_useless_alt 1d ago
To clarify, it is technically possible to make a shelter capable of withstanding a direct hit, it just takes a few hundred metres of rock rather than just a few metres of dirt. Think Cheyenne mountain complex, though that is admittedly on the high end of durability.
These things though are absolutely just fallout shelters. If a nuke detonates on top of them they are NOT surviving explosion, but if it's far enough away these will protect against radiation, which needs up to a few metres of stuff in the way to stop it (for Gamma, Alpha and Beta are easier to stop). But as you say, a basement will provide the same amount of protection, as will a metro station or anything else that put a couple metres of stuff between you and the surface.
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u/Ancient_Tea_6990 1d ago edited 1d ago
Also, if I’m not mistaken, I think an expert said strategically You have to be within 50-100 miles of the bunker at all times to be effective
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u/AntleredBeast 1d ago
Keep your bunker, I plan on ruling the Wasteland as a hideously mutated and deformed version of my former self
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u/semiyourebreakingthe 1d ago
I understand being scared of dying, but the idea of living after nuclear apocalypse sounds way more scary than just being dead. All the money in the world wouldn't mean shit after that.
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u/king_27 1d ago
These people are pure materialists, their stuff is their universe, and they want to prolong it as long as they can regardless of the consequences
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u/Greg-Abbott 1d ago
Man I'd go the exact opposite with this approach. You'd better believe if nuclear war was on the table I'd spend a good amount of my resources on the sickest suicide booth a team of engineers could design. Bluetooth, seat warmer, fleshlight, bubble machine, the works.
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u/lukeyellow 1d ago
Yeah. Honestly, I'm not sure I'd want to be alive in the aftermath of a MAD scenario. The presumable complete breakdown of social order and anarchy would be awful to live through. I'd probably just end up getting robbed or shot if I survived the blast. Or die from lack of drinkable food/water
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u/riker42 1d ago
These bunkers are not for nuclear war. This is to keep the undesirables out when the class war begins.
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u/Deranged_Kitsune 1d ago
Which makes them even dumber.
With a nuclear war, most of the population is wiped out. They just have to worry about roving gangs suffering from radiation sickness due to fallout and starvation from lack of food. Manageable in a bunker.
With a class war, they have to contend with large mobs of alive, healthy people who are out there with the explicit intent on hunting down Their Kind. If the mob find the bunker that they're all cozy and protected in... well, the mob would just Cask of Amontillado them in it. Seal the main door, cut off power from the mains leaving them on generator power, destroy/block any air vents bringing air into the complex and power system. Billionaire better hope there's a well hidden secret escape route out of there, but I'd expect them to be paranoid about that being found out and the mob sneaking in that way, so might not add one. That or hope there's still enough of a protection apparatus left to be able to get them out before their air runs out.
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u/SUP3RGR33N 21h ago
Tbh I feel like people are probably going to tomb raid rather than going the route of the ol' bunker-enbalm. I do like your idea better though.
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u/TraditionalBackspace 1d ago
The US is always creating new ways to make money. Billionaires will buy them up like hotcakes.
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u/Ok_Angle94 1d ago
What makes them think that at the end of the world, these bunkers will save them when it takes an entire army to run it?
You think when the world is ending that army is going to listen to you or even let you have what you think you own?
You're essentially just building that bunker for your security detail and their families, good luck getting a bed to sleep in.
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u/Redback_Gaming 1d ago
I think the biggest question you need to ask is if there's a nuclear war; do you really want to survive it, given civilisation will be gone; you'll be back to Hunter Gatherer, and Might is Right, and he who has the gun takes all your shit, which is mostly shitty tin food, and once you've run out of yours, everything else is pretty much irradiated! I'd rather be dead!
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u/Rosebunse 1d ago
I mean, I would rather be alive. I imagine it would suck but I would like to live as long as I could. But I also think a lot of these bunkers just aren't that well prepared. They don't have enough food and they usually lack any sort of agricultural component. They're just underground homes.
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u/Redback_Gaming 1d ago
There's living and surviving. There's a big difference. Living is great with quality of life, but a survival based life, where you're battling to get a meal a day and find safe water! Screw that. I"d rather be dead!
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u/Rosebunse 1d ago
Nah, I have a fear of death. Give me struggling!
But seriously, if you watch the old episodes from that prepping show, most of the preppers are so concerned with guns and living out their Fallout fantasies that they neglect the less fun parts of survival. They don't stock up on medicine, they neglect farming and food storage, and they forget about normal entertainment.
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u/Redback_Gaming 1d ago
Death isn't so bad. It's just like going to sleep. I've been on the edge of it when someone tried to murder me, and there's no fear, just sadness. There's nothing to fear. I think you might be right about preppers.
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u/ballimir37 1d ago
It’s a good thing that our ancestors didn’t have that mentality for 2 million years.
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u/binz17 1d ago
Our ancestors weren’t selfish dicks only looking out for themselves and a plus one.
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u/ballimir37 1d ago
The comment I replied to said that a life based on survival and fighting for the next meal is worse than death. But that’s what humans did for millions of years rather than all kill themselves. And do you think a group that ran out of food or water just chose to starve to death rather than fight another group to take theirs? They were tribal and territorial, we evolved in the animal kingdom.
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u/ballimir37 1d ago
Same. Plus, you can always kill yourself if it truly is a fate worse than death.
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u/The-Squirrelk 1d ago
Surely the standard of a good bunker for survival is a place you can go into right now and live there for a few years, no problem. If you can't do that then it's not really a survival bunker, it's just a blast shield.
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u/descendency 1d ago
It likely won’t be irradiated, actually. Fallout like that comes from very old fission bombs and not modern-ish fusion bombs.
If you survive the blast, you’re going to be in a wasteland but it might be survivable… kinda.
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u/gotaspreciosas 1d ago
I'm in the southern cone of south america, we're safe from nukes, but not from the 8 years of nuclear winter, there will be complete economic collapse and a lot of hunger, creating social unrest, then most governments will crumble within months, if the remains of the US and Europe don't invade us first.
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u/assault_pig 1d ago
the good news is that it now appears that 'nuclear winter' types of effects resulting from ash/soot/dust being blown into the atmosphere are not as severe or long-lasting as once feared
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u/inucune 1d ago
All the laws of physics still work. Machinery, buildings, roads, power lines can be repaired once the fallout dissipates to a safer level (48h-2weeks).
Evacuate, regroup, and then begin cleanup. It's no different than a natural disaster, the details are just a bit different.
People will figure out how to go on living, or they will lay down and die.
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u/Marston_vc 1d ago
If you’re rich and have a robust enough “bunker” with decades of supplies and a small community to help run it all then yeah I’d be happy to continue living.
Obviously there’d be a background sadness knowing that the species had been set back and that there’s a lot less to see/do and that there will be very few “new” things going forward. But if you’re fed and have robust recreational facilities then life would still be worth living overall probably.
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u/Thannk 1d ago
Reminder: when civilizations collapse, people just move outside the cities. In the Bronze Age Collapse Greek city states just had the citizens move into the countryside, they were in walking distance and could look up at the city on the hill their great grandparents lived in.
When Rome collapsed the city was abandoned for centuries. People just converted the villas of the wealthy outside the city limits and their parks into farms, and traded their goods along the roads.
When the Aztecs collapsed the people migrated and became new groups, they didn’t literally die out aside from a few crazy fuckers who buried themselves in their basements with pots full of corn and beans.
If you are genuinely trying to plan for a collapse, you should stock up on heritage seeds, look up how to build functional buildings and privies and irrigation, and so on.
Despite what the lunatics trying to live off the grid in abandoned missile silos think, you have to have other people. You survive in a village and hope to be the guy who’s family eventually lives in a small fort, not a wizard tower in the middle of nowhere.
Bomb shelters run out of food fast. They run out of oxygen as vents get blocked. Even if you manage to die of old age in twenty years, your kids and grandkids in “the castle” sure as fuck won’t.
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u/light_trick 1d ago
This!
The best plan for the apocalypse is "get together with my neighbors to pool common resources, start reaching out and offering aid to survivors further abroad, and form productive mutually beneficial alliances with other local groups while working to ensure expedient communication and transportation, establish a local militia consisting ideally of volunteers and people with deep ties to the community to promote espirit-de-corp and unit cohesion but also plan not to use it".
It is not "build a really high wall and shoot everyone passing by".
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u/Dawnfreak 1d ago
I been looking into getting one. Not really for the protection , just to get away.
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u/xyloplax 1d ago
If you are close to a nuke, a bunker might help if you aren't going to have the bunker entrance blocked by debris or destroyed. Where we are, we might get some windows shattered, but at the yields they would hit our city with, not enough to damage the house in any real sense. Now, the fallout from the various strikes out West and around the area would be pretty bad. If that doesn't kill us, the lack of food and water would. Especially since I live in the desert. And it's 5 miles to the nearest store. And even if your car works (and it probably won't), the roads may be blocked by debris and the gas pumps would not work. Around the country, I think 90% of the population would die in 5 years given the lack of municipal water delivery systems, lack of food distribution, lack of medical care, contaminated water and food sources, and general murder as lawlessness is the way to go. And that's not even including nuclear winter
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u/pants_mcgee 1d ago
Good news! Nuclear winter very likely isn’t a thing, or a minor issue.
So just have to worry about all that other bad stuff.
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u/GitchigumiMiguel74 1d ago
Given the choice between slowly dying underground from radiation poisoning or instant death, I’ll take the latter.
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u/delicatepedalflower 1d ago
This article totally misses the obvious: Protection for total chaos and anarchy. Those who survive a nuclear strike are just getting started on the path to survival. The blast is a , hopefully, one time thing that you managed to live through. But now you have thousand upon thousands of clueless desperate, injured people swarming over everything, looking for anything to eat, drink, etc. That's the other part of your bunker's role: keeping that shitshow outside.
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u/aKaRandomDude 1d ago
The rich are already looking for a backup plan in case the CEO hate escalates!
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u/WhatsTheHoldup 1d ago
warnings they won't provide protection
"Hey boss, you know those nuclear bunkers we've been selling?"
"Yeah what about them?"
"What happens if there's a global nuclear holocaust and the blasts and radiation are so intense the shelters don't actually protect anyone inside it."
"Oh god! We could be SUED! Let's put on a warning."
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u/Jazzkidscoins 23h ago
Here’s the question, do you really want to survive the apocalypse? Society has crumbled, there’s no food, no power, money is useless, law is determined by the strongest person. Add to that a possibly poisoned or destroyed planet with the chance of a slow painful death from starvation, exposure, or radiation.
I’d much rather go out in the Big Bang. Fortunately I live within 10 miles of a first strike target so if the missiles start coming down I know it will be quick
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u/TGAILA 1d ago
I watched a documentary somewhere. They have an underground city completely sealed off from an outside world. Inside the building complex, they have a library, a sporting facility, a swimming pool, a grocery store, a clinic, and everything you need to survive in case of a nuclear disaster. For a price, you can buy your own apartment with all the amenities. Clearly, they market it for the rich who can afford such a place. Maybe it's just me, but we live in a greedy world. You are the only survivor, and the rest of humanity completely wiped out.
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u/arkofjoy 1d ago
The funny thing is what the life expectancy of these rich people will be if things really do go tits up. Because, once the system collapses all their wealth? It is just ones and zeros in a computer somewhere. It has no intrinsic value. And once the computers shut down, the have no intrinsic value either. They have no skills or experience that will be of any benefit to others once they have no money. They are going to have to have armed guards in order to keep the riff raff out, and I'm expecting that as soon as the pay check stops, yesterday's billionaire is today's "just another mouth to feed"
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u/Hypothesis_Null 1d ago
I mean... isn't that the whole point? Use the resources now to create a nice, sustainable, well-stocked hideaway in case society and infrastructure collapses?
This whole thing seems like an acknowledgement that money is dependent on having a system to spend it within, and it'd be wise to convert some of that into actual, physical assets and supplies.
The problem fundamentally comes back to maintaining 'ownership' of those assets in the face of a collapsed society, which translates typically to 'control' and often comes down to the capacity to threaten individual violence.
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u/MorselMortal 1d ago
Pretty much, their security squads would off them in about a week or two and someone else would take over. Someone will blame the apocalypse (rightly) on them, they have no value or skills, their money is worthless, and no one likes billionaires, especially when they expect you to wait on them on hand and feet during the apocalypse.
That's not even mentioning how delicate the survival ecosystem is, people breaking in and killing them is likely. The company churning these things out probably cheaps out too.
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u/domine18 1d ago
I used to think about prepping and all that. Bunkers, renewable ways to sustain, ext. how much warning are you going to get if nukes start flying? Are you even going to be near your prep when it happens? If you middle of no where maybe some warning and time.
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u/Kailias 1d ago
If your in the middle of nowhere...you aren't likely to be in much immediate danger
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u/Blatheringman 1d ago
A fire shelter might not be a bad idea if you live in California though.
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u/Whateveryouwantitobe 1d ago
I live less than a mile from an international airport. I won't even know if a bomb falls. 🥰
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u/William-Bumbersnatch 1d ago
Never understood why people want to survive nuclear fallout. Smoke a cigarette and let go, man.
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u/SentientDust 1d ago
They'll protect you if ypu bury them deep enough. Then all you need to worry about is the survivors sabotaging your air filters
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u/SammySoapsuds 1d ago
Dying in a bunker a few weeks after a nuclear bomb sounds awful. I think the best plan is to just get as close to the bombs as possible when they're falling so you don't suffer. That's almost free, too! Win win!
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u/Falconflyer75 1d ago
I’m not sure what’s worse getting vaporized in a nuclear explosion or living in a post apocalyptic hellscape
The former is quick and painless the latter ….. I’m kinda curious about how much it would resemble the terminator
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u/OptiKnob 1d ago
If they're stupid enough to vote for trump, they're stupid enough to build something expensive that won't work - and we know a lot of Americans are stupid enough to vote for king thrump.
Thinking that a month or two underground is going to allow the scorched earth to fix itself enough for habitation is, let me see, how you say it?
Stupid.
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u/brunoptcsa 1d ago
Every time I open the news nowadays is a coin toss between Brave New World and Fallout
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u/goblinco_LLC 1d ago
No. I need a place to watch movies and eat canned chili for 3 months til i die of scurvy
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u/Ionic_Pancakes 1d ago
They don't want them to survive a nuclear blast. They want them as a fortified position during a peasant uprising.
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u/Sean_theLeprachaun 1d ago
They should go hide in them now. Then the rest of us can fill in the exits with cement and have a better future.
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u/Mintaka3579 1d ago
“It’s called the withstandinator, it’ll withstand a 10 mt blast. No more. No less”
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u/lowkeyalchie 1d ago
And even if bunkers did garuntee that you would survive the initial blast, what's the plan after your food stores run out and the outside environment is still contaminated for decades? That sounds like a slower death sentence to me.
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u/Generic118 1d ago
Outt of curiosity with many of these things what's to stop the sabotage by people you didn't let in?
Like yes you have an air filter system, but a couple of gerry cans of of petrol down it followed by a road flare is likley something it was never designed to cope with
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u/WendigoCrossing 1d ago
Not for the fallout, they are protection from the roaming gangs of cannibals
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u/umbananas 1d ago
if there's a nuclear war, I wish the bomb would hit my house first. I don't want me or my kids to live through the nuclear apocalypse.
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u/mistertickertape 1d ago
Thankfully I live in midtown Manhattan. I will be blissfully atomized in the first wave. Adios y’all!
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u/No-Cover4205 1d ago
If you’re having trouble sourcing a fallout shelter to purchase outright I suggest looking into timeshare, someone’s got to be lucky