Nuclear bunker sales increase, despite expert warnings they aren’t going to provide protection

I love the idea of bunkers for the rich. We scare them into the bunkers. Seal them up and go about our business in a better world. And in a thousand years archeologist will have new tombs to study. Win win.

This is actually the premise of a Cory Doctorow short story.

The story is called Masque of The Red Death (obviously a nod to the De Sade story). It's collected in Radicalized. I'll also note that the title story of that collection is about a group of people who start killing healthcare CEOs. Not sure why I felt like that was worth mentioning, certainly doesn't feel relevant to anything happening right now.
Edit: Cory's publisher actually put up the title story of Radicalized for free online - https://prospect.org/culture/books/2024-12-09-radicalized-cory-doctorow-story-health-care/ Again, not actually relevant to this thread, but maybe of interest to people anyway. Personally, I think the whole book is worth grabbing. Then again I have a personally signed copy so I'm probably biased.
- Masque of the Red death is a Edgar Allen Poe story not De Sade. If De Sade had written it the protagonist would have tried to fuck death.

Time to share another weird story from my weird life:

We rented a home in L.A. for a year that had a "fallout shelter" and I have to admit, that was part of the draw. Not because we thought we would need it or anything, just the idea that we lived in a house with a fallout shelter made both of us happy in an "oh, America. Never stop being you." sort of way.

As for the so-called shelter? It was a concrete box in the back yard buried maybe a foot below the ground, about the size of your average bread truck. Inside was a single light bulb socket. Not even benches. You got down to it via a wooden ladder and it was covered by a (famously nuclear flames-proof) wooden trap door. We never actually went down because there were icky spiders and bugs and stuff, but it would have been a good place to put a kidnap victim before the serial killing.

The whole idea that you could survive WWIII and live in the middle of Los Angeles is pretty funny to begin with. People have far more hope than sense.

In a colder climate you would call that a cellar. Traditionally, you would put things like potatoes, pickles and raspberry jam in there, but in the LA heat that might not work so well.
A friend of mine rented a place that had a 'bunker'. He showed me one time, a hatch in a back room, a ladder leading down about 8-10 feet down to the floor. Three fold up bunks, a 'chemical toilet, and a hand cranked air exchange pump. And boy was it quiet down there. It was built in the 50s. I was told there were several of them in that neighborhood.

Can’t find it now, but there was a reddit post where someone had shared a pic of a small DIY nuclear shelter for a family. Someone dissected why it was such an awful design, from the poor design for airflow, heat dissipation problems, inadequate walls to block radiation… there was a lot wrong with the design that you’d have to decide between dying of suffocation or just opening the door and getting some radiation.

A modern bunker would have to be relatively big, have all kinds of well thought out airflow systems that you could change a filter in without contaminating the “safe” area, and power to run it all for probably months at least. But now you’re the one person who is in good shape in a wasteland where easily a massive percentage of the population has died of lack of resources, medication. The people that kept everything running and repaired are among the dead, and probably the global supply chain has fallen apart. So congratulations…your bunker has saved you for a really shitty existence.

Edit: Found the reddit post.Seven years ago… can’t believe it stuck in my brain that long.

Plus you are absolutely surrounded by decaying corpses, and highly likely to get some sort of nasty infection as a result. All it would take is a scratch that an insect lands on.
Not a fun way to go, gangrene and sepsis..
- And the people who did survive will love to pay a visit to get that medical kit or food

Rich folks have had variations of these for a while, they called them "safe rooms". I've installed security alarms and phone/Internet lines in places like that, as well as monitors that show feeds from the house cameras. It's literally almost an entire house underneath the main house, ready for someone to seal themselves in and live in it for a couple months.

security alarms and phone/internet lines
I like the hubris that if the world goes to shit and they have to hole up for months that they think telecommunications or security will still work how they expect it.
- Locks, cameras etc. work on battery power just fine. Also, safe rooms are not intended for the apocalypse. It's where you hide from home intruders while you wait for the police.
- If I had the money, I'd build one I could survive in for a month....but for natural disasters (tornados and snowstorms). My requirement would be having enough to get by for a week which means I have to plan to get by for at least a month as I might have guests.
  If nuclear war breaks out, I'll be surface level hoping the first one to hits directly me in the face.
- They have multiple purposes, like being a place to hide from an angry mob, or as a storm shelter. Some even have secret escape tunnels.
If a true nuclear war breaks out between the US and another global power a sealed in ‘house’ with food for a couple months won’t matter. 😂
Just wondering, did any of them had the "pull a book from the bookshelf to open the safe room" thing?

Title: "expert warnings they aren't going to provide protection"
Rest of the article: Explains in detail how they are going to provide protection.

In limited circumstances. Which likely won't be limited. Not in the nuclear wars these people want to survive.
We aren't talking about nuclear bunkers in Kashmir. I could understand why someone in Kashmir might think that was a good idea.
These are people in Texas and Florida. If there's a nuclear war that would reach them, a bunker, even a luxury bunker, is not going to be enough to get them through it. That's a global annihilation event.
- It really depends. Nuclear bombs are powerful, but they are not as powerful as some people think. If you hit a city center, you would be able to survive in the suburbs easily. In addition, there is a good chance a portion of targets won't be cities, but military bases and other military targets.
  So for me, the question that will decide if you survive or not (aside from whether you are unlucky enough to be hit directly) is whether you can secure a food source after your initial supplies run out.
- ... People are dumb enough to try building underground in Florida?

bunkers crack me up. Our time in this space is in decades and anything you need a bunker for means you can't go out for decades.

Also, god damn, dude... you're already going to be in a nuclear bunker. Who are you worried about stealing your shit?

Before the War, you want your bunker to be open and easily accessible, so you don't have to go hunting for keys or struggle to remember a passphrase when the missiles come over the horizon. After the War, you want your valuables to be inside the bunker, so you can use your Tiffany broach to buy grain from the raiders. So, all your valuables need to be in the open bunker, but secure from pre-War thieves. Definitely need a vault in your vault.
I imagine that some people have firearms in their bunker.
Might as well install a safe room too.

Come on people! Get yourself a Vault-Tec bunker! Top of the line bunker right there.

All bunkers come with water, filters, and tools to restart society.

I look forward to surviving in my Vault-Tec bunker!

I want a house that's mostly buried, but just for the temperature benefits. And the possibilities for secret rooms.

Nuclear bunkers are trendy amongst certain groups of very wealthy folks. It's not about actually being protected, it's about keeping up with the Joneses.

Billionaires don't really buy bunkers for themselves, they often buy them as hotels for the people who can afford to pay an extra rent all year long. The way it usually works is paranoid people will pay for a room inside the bunker, for a monthly or yearly fee to guarantee them a room in case of a disaster