Do We Really Need Backyard Bunkers? Evaluating the Case for Residential Fallout Shelters

Well, well, well, look what we have here. Seems like backyard bunkers and basement bomb shelters are making a comeback faster than fanny packs and Birkenstocks. But are residential fallout shelters really a must-have these days or just another prepping fad? Let's unravel this little doomsday preparedness dilemma, shall we?

Bombs Away!

The Blast Radius of Reasons for Wanting a Home Shelter

Do you toss and turn at night, visions of missiles and mushroom clouds dancing in your head? Okay, maybe you don't stay up worrying about full-scale nuclear annihilation. But it’s hard to ignore the persistent threats of conflict and climate catastrophe in the world today. Building a home shelter offers some peace of mind against various doomsday scenarios. But are these post-apocalyptic Panic Rooms really necessary? Let’s review the reasons people give:

• Nuclear attacks - No one wants to get caught trousers down when the bombs start falling. A home shelter provides protection against radiation, fallout, and blast impacts.
• Natural disasters - From wildfires to tornadoes, having a safe room to hunker down in can save lives during extreme weather events.
• Civil unrest - If societal order goes topside, you’ll be glad to have a secure spot to shelter your family and supplies.
• Zombie outbreaks - Just kidding! But some preppers take the threat of flesh-eating ghouls very seriously.

Bombshell Budgets

What Owning an Underground Bunker Could Cost You

Before you grab a shovel and start digging up the backyard, bear in mind that installing a tricked-out subterranean shelter carries a hefty price tag.

• Prefab shelters - $25,000 to $200,000+
• Underground construction - $60 to $200 per square foot
• Retrofitting basements - $5,000+
• Supplies - $5,000+

That's enough money to buy a luxury car, put your kids through college, or fund a mid-life Eat, Pray, Love experience across Europe. Make sure your household priorities align before shelling out big bucks for what is essentially a giant insurance policy.

Analyzing Your Best Bet for Survival

If staying put during a disaster doesn't sound great, maybe you'd prefer to hit the road and bug out to a remote location instead. Both bunkering and bugging out come with pros and cons to weigh. Think through what would work best for your family’s situation.

Bunkering Down At Home

✅ Access to stored supplies/shelter

❌ Possibility of home damage

❌ Stuck in one location indefinitely

Bugging Out To A Remote Spot

✅ Increased mobility/flexibility

❌ Harsher elements/less physical security

❌ Limited supplies/few permanent structures

There’s no definitively right or wrong choice. Make preparations for both scenarios just in case - pack bug out bags with survival necessities while also equipping your home shelter.

Supplying Your Doomsday Dugout

Okay, you’ve sealed yourself into your concrete cocoon stocked with months or years worth of provisions. Let’s review the food, water, and other key supplies required to keep your brood alive during a long-haul lockdown scenario like nuclear winter or viral pandemic.

• Water - 1+ gallon per person per day
• Long shelf-life food - beans, rice, canned goods, MRE’s
• Cooking equipment - camp stove, fuel, mess kits
• Sanitation - toilet, waste bags, cleaning chemicals
• Power - generators, fuel, batteries
• Air filtration - ventilation fans, particle filters
• Medical - first aid supplies, Rx meds, radiation detection
• Defense - weapons, ammunition, gas masks

With the basics covered, focus next on rounding out the creature comforts - entertainment options, comfy bedding, coffee and snacks. Hey, if surviving the apocalypse was comfortable no one would complain!

Ideal Spots For Building Your Bolthole

Assuming you’d prefer not to live like Hobbits under a grassy hillside, optimal spots for installing a home shelter include:

• Basements - easily fortified and often underground already
• Backyards - offers privacy and outdoor access
• Garages - existing structures that provide space
• Natural features - hillsides, retaining walls to bury shelters within
• Remote buildings - barns, sheds located away from main home

Avoid low-lying areas at risk for flooding. Ensure good drainage around subterranean shelters too. Pick locations that balance secrecy with accessibility so you can readily access your lifeboat when tsunami warnings sound.

Rated Safe for the Whole Family

Transforming your shelter from a cold survival capsule into a welcoming refuge will make stressful confinement conditions far more tolerable over both the short and long haul. Consider how to meet these top family-friendly design criteria:

• Space - minimum 10-20 square feet per person
• Layout - sleeping, living, kitchen, bathroom zones
• Comforts - seating, beds, entertainment, games
• Air quality - ventilation, filtration systems
• Lighting - electricity, battery powered
• Temperature control - insulation, heating/cooling

When fortifying your family fallout shelter, focus on creating a flexible and functional space conducive to daily living over months or longer.

Drop and Give Me More Leg Room!

Not everyone lives in a single family home with a basement and backyard to transform into a customized bunker. Urban apartment dwellers and tiny home enthusiasts, fear not! More modest emergency shelter options exist too.

• Hardened safe rooms - retrofit closets or bathrooms with reinforced walls/doors to create an emergency shelter.
• Prefabricated pods - order a stand-alone steel unit for your patio or garage customized with bunks, storage cabinets, toilet, etc.
• Community shelters - local public buildings like schools and town halls often open for evacuees to take temporary refuge.
• Rent shelter space - some companies offer memberships to reserve bunk space in shared emergency shelters around the country.

With smart design and strategic local partnerships, finding adequate shelter is possible even for those with limited residential space to call their own.

Do You Copy? Over.

Communication Options for Staying in Touch During Crises

When the Stuff Hits the Fan (SHTF in prepper lingo), normal communication lines are often overwhelmed or compromised. Yet maintaining contact with the outside world for news, coordinating aid, or checking on loved ones remains critical. Equip your shelter with diverse communication systems:

• Two-way radios - reliable short-range option for coordinating locally
• Satellite phones - allows global calling without cellular networks
• AM/FM/NOAA radios - receive emergency broadcast updates
• Computers - email, internet allows digital communications
• Signaling devices - mirrors, flares, banners to indicate position

Establish contingency meeting points and communication protocols with friends and family beforehand. Practice using radios and emergency signaling techniques too.

Should You Have Gas Masks and Hazmat Suits?

Let’s address two of the most iconic preparedness items - gas masks and hazmat suits. Are these post-apocalyptic looking pieces of personal protective equipment (PPE) really a must-have? Let's compare the for's and against's.

Arguments For Masks and Suits

• Filtration - protects against radioactive particles, airborne viruses, smoke inhalation
• Physical coverage - seals out direct contact threats like chemical weapons
  
  
• Psychological comfort - makes you feel safer confronting hazardous scenarios

Arguments Against Masks and Suits

• Expense - professional grade gear costs hundreds per set
• Discomfort - bulky and restrictive to move in over long periods
• Limited scenarios - only useful for selective CBRN (chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear) agent attacks

Evaluate the specific threats in your region. For most families, focusing preparedness funds on shelter integrity, food, water, and medical supplies delivers a better return on investment than buying expensive PPE.

Gimme Shelter!

While atomic war and zombie invasions make for splashy Hollywood storylines, statistically you’re far more likely to encounter a natural disaster than a man-made one. Fortunately, an underground shelter can save lives even during common events like tornadoes, hurricanes, and winter storms.

• Tornadoes - subterranean shelters protect from dangerous winds
• Hurricanes - avoids flooding and debris impacts above ground
• Blizzards - earth insulation keeps bunkers warmer
• Wildfires - prevents smoke inhalation and burns

For a modest upfront investment, a weather-resistant emergency bunker serves double duty preparing for both sensational threats like nuclear war and realistic risks like tornado alley’s annual severe storm season.

The Waiting Game

Stocking Your Hideaway to Avoid Hazardous Supply Runs

Once sealed in your shelter, the last thing you’ll want is to leave the relative safety of your buried bunker for a risky supply run topside. Stock at least 2 weeks to 30+ days worth of critical provisions. Check and rotate inventories annually for freshness too.

• Water - 1+ gallon per person per day
• Food - long shelf life goods, high calorie dense items
• Medications - pain and disease management
• Sanitation - waste bags, paper goods, disinfectants
• Energy - fuel, batteries for equipment operation
• Information - books, magazines, games, radios

Install water collection systems so you can harvest rainfall without going outside if hydrating via stored water alone becomes difficult long-term.

Private Protection or Public Service? 

Picture this ethical dilemma - schools of survivors come begging to your bunker but you have limited space and supplies. Does conscientiously preparing for crisis incur some obligation to aid community members who didn’t take precautions themselves? Tricky question indeed.

On the one hand, turning away desperate people in need violates moral principles of compassion and “loving thy neighbor.” Yet shelters and stockpiles stretch quickly when supporting additional souls beyond your family.

Striking a balance looks like this: Help where you can reasonably accommodate extra people without substantially jeopardizing your own interests. Maybe that means distributing some spare blankets or setting up temporary tents in your yard instead of welcoming strangers into your living quarters. Create contingency plans for what you’ll do when people come knocking. And invest in extra supplies that could be used for charitable purposes in case it becomes necessary.

Read the Fallout Forecast

Staying Informed With Reliable News and Emergency Communication Networks

Speaking of welcoming visitors, don’t let just anyone waltz into your emergency stronghold unchecked! Vet guests to ensure bad actors don’t infiltrate under the guise of needing help. 

Listen to emergency broadcast networks and ham radios to stay informed about conditions on the ground and aid organizations. Monitoring reliable information channels also provides forewarning to secure the hatches when danger nears.

• NOAA weather radio - government weather and emergency news
• AM/FM radio - localized reporting on disaster response efforts
• Police/fire scanners - monitors first responder activities
• Ham radio - connect into informal emergency communications network
• Trusted contacts - structured check-ins with family or neighbors

Accuracy matters during disasters. Compare reports from multiple credible sources to separate facts from fiction before reacting.

Cantankerous Canines on High Alert!

Low and Hi-Tech Perimeter Alarm Systems

A concealed, camouflaged shelter won’t provide security for long once desperate survivors or menacing brigands come searching nearby habitable hidey holes. Perimeter warning systems alert bunker dwellers attempting breaches are afoot so you can prepare to actively defend the homestead with, shall we say, persuasive deterrents if needed.

Low tech sensors options:

• Tripwires rigged to flares, bells, cameras
• Watch dogs patrolling property boundaries

High tech sensor ideas:

• Motion activated security floodlights and cameras
• Sonic and infrared trip beam systems
• Monitored wireless security systems

Don’t rely completely on anonymity and secrecy. Have multiple means ready to detect interlopers and rally an appropriate response. After all, when going for a lovely countryside ramble, marauders don’t expect to stumble into a snake pit! 

Is It Time to Run for the Bunkers?

Making the Case for Residential Shelters

Given the ever-escalating array of alarming threats in today’s volatile world - nuclear brinkmanship, global conflict, climate disaster, cyber terrorism, viral contagion, political rancor, economic meltdown, TikTok dancing challenges - who could blame you for wanting to hive away from the horror in a comfy home bunker? Still, absent an imminent cancel-the-apocalypse scenario on the horizon, for many households justifying or affording tricked out underground lairs remains impractical.

Most people stack the odds for survival just fine through far simpler and cheaper means like:

• Advance disaster planning for different scenarios
• Developing useful self reliance skills
• Building community connections for mutual aid
• Maintaining disaster supply caches

Rather than sink the kids’ college fund into a state-of-the-art bolthole, put funds towards general preparedness measures first. Augment supplies and training over time. Shelter upgrades can come later if threat levels escalate. Let practical priorities guide smart, budget-friendly action steps over hyper-reactive doomsday dread.

The End...Or Is It Just The Beginning?

Time Will Tell!

And so we conclude this little thought experiment about whether residential fallout shelters deserve a slot on everyone’s household must-have list! Hopefully the decision seems a smidge less nuclear now.

I don’t know about you, but after musing about all these chilling shelter scenarios, a nap and a snack sounds lovely. Maybe we’ll chatter more later about other prepping pearls of wisdom if curiosity or current events warrant! Let’s circle back soon, but on that uplifting note, cheers and over-and-out for now my preparedness people!