One problem associated with having a fallout or blast shelter is whether you can access it quickly. If you're at work when the balloon goes up, and your shelter is halfway across town, you're going to have extreme difficulty reaching it. And that's assuming you (and everyone else) gets sufficient notice of an attack. Chances are good that you may get little notice or, more likely, none at all.

Sub-launched ICBM's can reach most cities along the US eastern seaboard in three to six minutes, which is barely enough time to figure out that an attack is in progress, let alone respond to it. Cities in the Midwest would probably start taking hits ten to fifteen minutes later, so they would have a little more time to prepare.

Then there is the problem of whether your city is a target, or will only receive fallout from attacks on distant locales. If you're located in or near a target area, then you need to consider building a blast shelter. As other commentators have suggested, you'll need to harden the shelter against typical nuclear weapons effects. More specifically, so that it will withstand three things:

- immediate radiation

- heat

- blast (and the accompanying issues of seismic shock and overpressure)

The first two can be dealt with by burying the shelter several feet underground, and ensuring that the walls of the shelter are thick enough to support the earth overburden. The shelter need not be buried very deeply. Three feet is sufficient, and will stop 99% of the radiation coming from any fallout that arrives. Six feet is better, and will also do a better job of blocking the immediate radiation pulse.

The blast wave, however, will require you to install blast valves, and a ventilation system that can pressurize the shelter so that it won't collapse from overpressure.

You will also need to consider adding some sort of shock absorber system to cope with seismic effects (sometimes also known as 'ground slap'). Proper installation of

blast valves, pressurization systems and shock management systems will require

professional engineering assistance, and will make shelter design and construction more complex. To say nothing of more expensive.

Here's a Youtube video that amply demonstrates what happens when the blast wave from a nuclear explosion hits. You'll see the seismic effects around the 0:30 mark.

Chinese Nuclear Weapon Effects Test

If your only concern is fallout, however, then a purpose-built shelter may not even be necessary, unless you live in an area where the heaviest fallout is expected. You could probably get by with erecting a refuge area in your basement with three feet of sandbags for a ceiling, and three feet of sandbags on each wall of the refuge, and then

three feet of sandbags piled six feet high on the two outside walls closest to the shelter.

If you plan to accommodate only yourself and your immediate family, (say four people in total), ventilation, food, water, and sanitation will not be as much of an issue.

With 18 people, however, the issue of constructing a fallout shelter becomes more complex, and a purpose-built shelter will be required. A simple steel culvert pipe approximately ten to twelve feet wide, and sixty feet long, buried three to six feet underground and then outfitted accordingly, might be sufficient.

and no one has really thought of a good way to provide power.

the 90 degree entry is spot on. radiation cant turn a corner easily. plus, worst case, its easy to defend if people try to force their way in.

water storage can be put into a gray tank for reuse. it would be super keen if you could dig a well inside or next to your shelter. again, cheap to maintain and run. plus, the water will be as clean as any youll find provided the water table is deep enough. it would be easy to test as well.

I found your blog by accident by googling NaNoWriMo. Funny you’re thinking about something I’ve been goofing with for years.

FWIW, CT has it about right. Read “Nuclear War Survival Skills” by Cresson Kearney. Just about everything you need to separate the facts from the fiction is there. If you need a copy, email me. It’s an eBook in PDF format. Exhaustive, well-informed reading.

A few other thoughts:

1). Use geometry shielding (90 degree angles) to shield your door. Done properly, each 90 degree bend drops the incoming exposure by a factor of 10x. (Ie, one 90 deg bend takes a 300 rad/hr field down to 30 rad/hr). It also tends to break-up the shockwave if you do it right, and makes your door less vulnerable to blast debris and distant small-arms fire.

2). Berm the entire structure. 3 feet of dirt all around and use of 12 inch thick concrete walls give a 1400:1 reduction in absorbed dose for your occupants.

3). Consider using ICF’s (insulated concrete forms… Google it, Reward Wall Systems, Inc) for your wall structures. You can assemble these like Legos, add-in the code-required rebar, and fill them with concrete. The US Army tested a structure made with these against a simulated airburst nuclear device of 150 kt yield at a slant range of 3000 meters. It cracked slightly but did not yield. The simulated occupants survived nicely.

4). Consider the effects of the EMP pulse in your planning. The super-efficient flourescent lamps and LEDS currently in vogue are poor survivors in an EMP event. Add-in some of the basic tried-and-true Edison bulbs as a fall-back.

5). Consider moving the generator room. Decouple it from the main slab and give it it’s own isolated space. Two reasons: a). Noise and vibration. b). Fire resistance. Understand a diesel rig won’t be hurt by indirect blast pressure (just keep the debris from hitting it and keep the overpressure pulse under 20 psi) and it won’t care a bit about ultra-high radiation fields. So this critter can (and should) go into a bermed vault with a concrete cover displaced a few inches around the perimeter for ventilation. You can access this gen-pen from the main living area via a short tunnel with a blast door.

6). If you plan on having self-generated power, you’ll need not only abundant fuel (diesel is ideal)… but a redundant / servicable power system. Design for accessibility and sustainability. Stock spare parts. Know how to trouble-shoot and repair everything quickly. Understand that any “modern” genny will have a brushless head and internal excition. Ditch this complexity for a “cheap” chinese head using a Z-winding feedback-excitation scheme. (You can fix it in less than 10 minutes once you understand how they work, and parts are cheap and universally available).

7). Ventilation is the Achilles Heel of any shelter. Where I live, you couldn’t survive the heat/humidity of such a shelter for more than a few hours. Air movement, or air conditioning, is a requirement. Your current design doesn’t allow much, if any, cross-flow. You might want to work on this aspect.

Looking forward to seeing what you submitted to NaNoWriMo!

so what is your take on the water problem and the security issue?

well my idea for the renewable energy was to raise them from inside the bunker or outside after the blast is over with. maybe wearing the radiation suits i suggested.