Fallout Shelters

I'll expand on this section soon.

To improve your chances of surviving a nuclear attack, your primary need would be an adequate shelter equipped for many days of occupancy. A shelter that affords good protection against fallout radiation and weather would be adequate in more than 95% of the area of the United States. However, even in almost all areas not endangered by blast and fire during a massive nuclear attack, the fallout protection provided by most existing buildings would not be adequate if the winds blew from the wrong direction during the time of fallout deposition.

To remain in or near cities or other probable target areas, one would need better protection against blast, fire, and fallout than is provided by most shelters in buildings. Blast tests have proved that the earth-covered expedient fallout shelters described in this book can survive blast effects severe enough to demolish most homes. This chapter is concerned primarily with expedient shelters that give excellent protection against fallout radiation. These earth-covered fallout shelters could be built in 48 hours or less by tens of millions of Americans following field-tested, written instructions.

from Nuclear War Survival Skills, chapter 5 "Shelter, The Greatest Need"

The book Nuclear War Survival Skills focuses mostly on shelters made from earth. Most of these are dug (partly or completely) into the ground, though there are some above-ground methods of shelter construction shown also. These earth-made shelters are only useful if you live somewhere with enough soil deep enough to dig down into, or at least have enough soil to cover a shelter with. In other places with extremely shallow soil, or no soil (such as a block of flats in the middle of a city that it's too late to escape from in your particular situation), other methods are used. One big advantage of the earth-dug shelters from Nuclear War Survival Skills is that they are also quite resistant to blast damage (from the pressure wave), much more so than the average modern house or flat. However if you are far enough away from the bomb detonation, blast will not be nearly as much of an issue as fallout.

The general principle of sheltering from fallout is the same everywhere. That is, to provide a large amount of mass between you and the outside where fallout dust has accumulated. By mass, I mean any material at all, the thicker and heavier the better. About 10 centimetres of earth will block out half of the deadly gamma rays which are the main danger from nuclear fallout. Every additional 10cm of earth will again halve the danger, so that 20cm is 1/4 the exposure, 30cm is 1/8th, 40cm is 1/16th, 50cm is 1/32, and so on. One metre would be 1/1024 the exposure which would be safe in even the most extreme levels of fallout close to a massive nuclear detonation.

Remember that the whole point of a fallout shelter is to be surrounded by as much mass as possible, between you and the outside where the fallout dust has landed. This means that many already-existing underground structures would make excellent fallout shelters. Examples (depending on their individual features) would be caves, tunnels, basements, underground car parks, storm drains (that aren't likely to be flash-flooded), etc.

Indoor Fallout Shelters

Here are some pictures of a couple of fallout shelters that can be built quickly inside a normal modern house or flat. Taken from the Protect and Survive video series.

Use any containers you have and anything that's heavy to put in them: Sand, dirt, books, water (if you have containers), etc.

Doors can be unscrewed and leaned against a wall. Here a strip of wood is nailed to the floor to stop the doors slipping, but you could use other means if you didn't have a hammer or nails.

This would be a wall with as much mass as possible on the other side, or at least an interior wall. The main principle is to make the gamma rays travel through as much mass as possible before they can get to you. The gamma rays travel almost completely in straight lines.

Pile up anything and everything heavy that you have over the doors. They have been tied together with rope to hold everything together.

In this next picture an entrance has been made and more stuff piled up above it. Ideally your entrance should be constructed so that there is a bend in the passage leading into your shelter, so that there is no straight line of sight from outside the shelter to the inside. This is because the gamma rays travel in straight lines and don't go around corners.

Here is an alternative type of indoor shelter that can be constructed quickly in the case of an escalating crisis. The more material you pile on top and around the sides, the better — as long as the table (or other support) inside is strong enough to hold the weight.

Outdoor Fallout Shelters

Here is an example of an outdoor "expedient" fallout shelter. Expedient means it can be made quickly, i.e. with speed. It's one of the types described in Nuclear War Survival Skills. The person in the foreground is Cresson Kearny. They are using doors from a house as the supporting material, though other materials could also be used. These types of shelters are quite good at resisting blast, much better than an ordinary house. They are meant to be able to be constructed by an ordinary family within about 1-2 day's worth of time. These shelters have a protection factor of something like 200, which means that inside the shelter you will get 200 times less radiation than outside. That is quite a high protection factor and possibly a lot more than you would need in many places. The images are taken from the video "Expedient Shelters" which is part of the Civil Defense 8-DVD Set. Also available here.

Earth is piled around the shelter on all sides.

Continuing with piling on the earth. The inside (floor) is also being dug out. If this was impossible at your location, you would need to either make the walls higher (with more piled up earth around the shelter), or put up with a much smaller space. Remember the first day after fallout arrives is by far the most dangerous, and in many places just a day or two in the shelter would be enough to save your life and the lives of your family.

Doors (or anything else you have) are layed on top of the shelter. Then more earth is piled on top, the more earth (or anything heavy), the more protection from radiation.

The view from inside the shelter so far. When I was a child I used to make "cubby houses" a lot like this, though with less digging, and it was fun. By using similar metaphors, children can be spared some of the stress of an impending nuclear situation.

Cover the whole thing in plastic, or anything you have, that can protect from rain. If you don't have anything, this step is more for rain protection than fallout/radiation protection. Though it may possible for heavy rain to wash some fallout dust into the shelter, which would lessen the protection of the shelter, most water seepage would be filtered through a lot of earth and would be clean from radiation.

In heavy fallout areas you would need to be in the shelter for a while, perhaps up to two weeks (or even longer if there were multiple nuclear bombs detonated over a period of time). Though when fallout is less intense, going outside for short periods (such as to bucket out any water that's entered) is fine.

The entrance to the shelter. In the video he is talking about piling up more material above and on the sides of the entrance.

In the background on the left you can see another type of shelter, that can be constructed very quickly. It's a trench dug into the ground, with a car driven over the top, and lots of earth shovelled around the outsides of the car, and inside the car.

Inside the shelter, where there is about 200 times less nuclear radiation than outside.

Cover image by Mikhail Starodubov.

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