IMPORTANT NOTE: While News4Mass does provide some loose ideas on some basic survival structures, these are not guaranteed to work to any degree, and should the News4Mass team survive a nuclear war, we will, in no way, be held responsible for anything that becomes of this. Thank you, and please enjoy the article.
Now THAT's a big boom! (Image via Wikipedia)
The nuclear weapon; mankind’s greatest ever attempt at a mass killing of its own kind. I suppose no one should be surprised, we as humans are perfecting the art of killing one another, and we have gotten quite proficient at it. Does that mean that I’m going to let them take me that easily? Not a chance. Now I’m not pointing any fingers at whom I might think will be the leader to cause this, but I have begun formulating a contingency plan of sorts to ride out the inevitable nuclear war and impending apocalypse.
Unfortunately, I have had to rule out some of the more costly alternatives to survive in order to pay for my most recent excursion. Oh, and I figured I’d go ahead and do you a favor. Don’t buy into the hype; despite great amounts of research conducted at my own personal expense, the News4Mass research team has, in fact, discovered that Chevy Trucks DO NOT survive nuclear explosions, and are, therefore, not apocalypse-proof.
No, as much as they'd like you to think it, they won't save you. Nothing can save you now. (GMC and Chevy Trucks (Photo credit: CraigSnedeker))
Don’t ask how we tested that.
In order to help me with my planning for the inevitable, I have hired lead nuclear researcher, contractor, and local apocalypse buff, David McPherson. He has prepared for me two plans that he said would give me a 94% chance of surviving the impending doom of humanity. For the egregious amounts of cash that he received for his services, I was hoping for something more like 97%, but he said that’s the best he could do. So while I don’t tolerate failure, it was better than anyone else offered, so I took it and ran with it. (Mr. McPherson is no longer with us. As sad as his death was, let’s just say that from a purely scientific perspective, his death was fascinating, and leave it at that.)
While my plan really isn’t complete yet, I have a few starts on some things that could work. Take a look.
1. Superterranean Lead-Concrete Shelter
I just hope there'd be enough space in there... (Bomb Shelter (Photo credit: elmada))
With this plan, my goal was to build a freestanding shelter above the ground that could not only shield against the direct blast of a nuclear bomb, but also block the radiation of said weapon. In theory, a sufficiently thick concrete/lead/second-layer-of-concrete walled building might be able to withstand such an explosion. Of course, you will need to prepare a group of people to repopulate the post-apocalyptic world, so it needs to be sufficiently large, and that could cost quite a bit of money. Money which, while I may or may not have, I would not be inclined to spend it on such an expensive project. And I know what you’re going to say, “so a bomb shelter is too expensive, but a zip line from South America to Nevada isn’t?”
To that I offer a simple rebuttal. Shut up. Looks like you guys didn’t go invest 97% of your paychecks for a year into your unusually friendly step-uncle’s company due to him telling you that the company was about to strike it big. Who’s fault is that, now?
2. Subterranean Concrete Shelter
Yeah, something like this could work. (Image via Wikipedia)
This plan dealt with a number of issues that the previous plan overlooked. For one, if the structure is built sufficiently far underground, then only enough concrete to sustain the weight of the building must be used, greatly reducing the strain on the concrete industry. Of course, that means that you are going to have to somehow hollow out a hole underground, which could be problematic for a number of reasons. For one, how does one go about getting that much dirt/rock/whateverelse out of the ground in the first place?
In any event, I highly advise everyone to go out and prepare for the apocalypse however they can. While we aren’t all dubiously rich, we can make it through all of our governments’ stupidities together, with (some of) our heads intact.
Good luck out there, and I hope you don’t get nuked.
~Howell
