I know a lot of bunkers are pretty robust and can handle just about anything short of a direct hit to the bunker with a decent sized nuke, but yeah, being in DC during a nuclear exchange is probably amongst the less ideal locations to be, along with “hiking on Cheyenne Mountain”, or “delivering pizza to the Pentagon”.
We used to rent a house in middle L.A. and someone had built a “fallout shelter” in the back yard back in the 1960s. It was a concrete box just below ground about the size of an average panel truck with a single light bulb outlet and nothing to sit on. You climbed down a rickety ladder after lifting the wooden door at the top.
Why the hell anyone thought they would survive in that is beyond me.
That’s potentially not great for survival outside of a nuclear blast.
To be fair, it might do an okay job protecting them from one part of a nuke if it was a moderate distance away, like the middle of LA wouldn’t be.
A couple miles out the shockwave will be basically horizontal, so it being buried would potentially help you skip that part. That just leaves “firestorm making it an oven”, “ground vibration making the roof fall on you”, “suffocating due to no air circulation”, “fallout falling through the ceiling hole making you sick”, “dying of dehydration before enough fallout clears to leave”, and “sitting in a dark room with a bucket of your own feces for the rest of your life because your ladder broke”.
Maybe, but the couple of times I opened that lid of a door, I sure as hell didn’t want to go down into that spider-infested hole. I’ll take my chances with a hydrogen bomb. Ick.
I know a lot of bunkers are pretty robust and can handle just about anything short of a direct hit to the bunker with a decent sized nuke, but yeah, being in DC during a nuclear exchange is probably amongst the less ideal locations to be, along with “hiking on Cheyenne Mountain”, or “delivering pizza to the Pentagon”.
We used to rent a house in middle L.A. and someone had built a “fallout shelter” in the back yard back in the 1960s. It was a concrete box just below ground about the size of an average panel truck with a single light bulb outlet and nothing to sit on. You climbed down a rickety ladder after lifting the wooden door at the top.
Why the hell anyone thought they would survive in that is beyond me.
That’s potentially not great for survival outside of a nuclear blast.
To be fair, it might do an okay job protecting them from one part of a nuke if it was a moderate distance away, like the middle of LA wouldn’t be.
A couple miles out the shockwave will be basically horizontal, so it being buried would potentially help you skip that part. That just leaves “firestorm making it an oven”, “ground vibration making the roof fall on you”, “suffocating due to no air circulation”, “fallout falling through the ceiling hole making you sick”, “dying of dehydration before enough fallout clears to leave”, and “sitting in a dark room with a bucket of your own feces for the rest of your life because your ladder broke”.
A desk might actually have been a better plan.
Maybe, but the couple of times I opened that lid of a door, I sure as hell didn’t want to go down into that spider-infested hole. I’ll take my chances with a hydrogen bomb. Ick.
Oh, I didn’t even think of the spiders, or how it’s probably damp and covered in mold. I only thought about the suffocation hazard.
Refrigerator FTW