July 16th, 1994
Currently listening to: The Future’s So Bright, I’ve Gotta Wear Shades - Timbuk 3
Hello! This is the first entry in this diary. I figure I’ll post one about once a month, mostly about whatever progress I’ve made on building out and stocking the bunker since the previous post. Since this is the first post, I don’t have any progress to report, haha.
Don’t worry, I’ll use this entry to go over some of the research and planning I’ve done (all the sources I’ve found and diagrams I’ve made can be found here). By far, the most useful resource I’ve found is this book called Nuclear War Survival Skills. It’s a little dated since it came out in 1979, but it’s got sooooo much info. It helped me understand some of the construction choices in the bunker itself.
Below is a rough diagram I sketched of the bunker layout. I had no clue what the crank attached to the west wall was, but according to NWSS it’s a Kearny Air Pump! Ventilation is naturally a big concern in a totally confined space, so the KAP is there to allow fresh air to be manually pumped into the shelter, and festering air to be pushed out (the exhaust pipe is on the opposite wall).
You might be wondering if it’s safe to be pumping in outside air in the case of nuclear fallout. Wouldn’t you just be pulling all of that radioactive air into the shelter that’s supposed to be protecting you from it? It’s not a bad question, but it is in fact almost totally safe! This is because the most harmful fallout is in the form of larger, sand-like particles, which fall to the ground quickly. Particles small enough to be inhaled and to be carried by the air are also slow-falling, and by the time they reach near ground level, they’re either been carried far away by the wind or have decayed enough to no longer be dangerous. How cool!
The other curious construction feature is the second door in the northeast corner. The door from the basement to the shelter took a few full-body shoves to open, since it’s heavy duty and likely unopened for a few decades. The other door, which is more of a hatch with a vault-like handle, wouldn’t budge even after extended effort (to be fair, it was warm and I got sweaty pretty quickly, so it was hard to get a solid grip). After reading through NWSS, I figured out that it must be an emergency exit that lets out somewhere in the backyard. This is a good idea, because if the main entrance got blocked or stuck somehow and there was no other exit, well, you can see the issue. A second exit doesn’t help much if it won’t open though!! That will probably be one of the first things I work on, and I’m sure it shouldn’t be too hard if I have the right tools and/or elbow grease.
With the instructions in NWSS and some other places, I started writing down what supplies I was going to need to have a functional, effective fallout shelter. I decided to stock about 6 months of any given consumable (food, water, batteries, etc.). It would be ideal to stock it for even longer, but space is limited (and so is money) so I had to pick a jumping off point. Also, apparently most cases will result in fallout that’s only dangerous for a few days or weeks, so accounting for that time frame with a solid buffer is probably good enough.
I’m going to stock the shelter with non-perishable food, plenty of water, buckets for waste, and batteries for light and radio use. I’m also going to construct some shelves, a bunk, and a table for eating and working. I sketched out some ideas for the layout below. I figure I’ll stock the food throughout the next few months, since the idea of hauling hundreds of cans in one go is… less than appealing. Everything else can be split up into individual projects though, and I’m excited to get started :D
Oh, and a final note: I thought it would be fun to set a deadline for having this shelter fully stocked and viable. I think six months will be enough time. My official goal is to finish this project on January 25th of next year (25 is my lucky number). Wish me luck!