Photo: Tom Fisk

How deep should a bunker be to survive a nuke?

A fallout shelter needs to protect you from radioactive particles and blast impact: compacted dirt is great at both. Building down to a depth of about ten feet will provide ample protection, but any deeper makes it hard to dig out in the event of a collapse.

ashtales.com - How to Survive a Nuclear Attack | Ash Tales

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The numbers in the diagram represent dose reduction: those rooms marked with 200 will successfully reduce radiation exposure to 1/200th of what it would it be outside; those showing 10 will only reduce exposure to a paltry 1/10th.

In the event of a nuclear attack, a conventional one or two story house will provide next to no protection; and according to FEMA's guidelines, if you're caught unawares, your best bet is to seek shelter in a basement or subway station. But as the entire premise of this guide is preparedness, why not go the whole hog, and actually build a fallout shelter?

Instead of cobbling together some extremely amateurish instructions (and risk causing you a cave-in as soon as the blast hits), I'll leave the minutiae of actually building the shelter to more qualified people; but I can still dig-up a few broad guidelines for your build.

BUILD UNDERGROUND

USE CONCRETE AND REBAR

Concrete and steel are cheap, plentiful and tough; perfect fodder for building an effective shelter without breaking the bank.

BUILD AN EMERGENCY ENTRANCE/EXIT

No matter how well constructed your fallout shelter, there's always a risk of debris blocking your entrance and trapping you inside. Though far from a fail-safe, building a small emergency escape hatch doubles your potential exit routes.

PLAN FOR TWO WEEKS UNDERGROUND

It can be hard to gauge when it's safe to emerge from your shelter, but most estimates suggest a minimum stay of 24-hours, and a maximum stay of 14-days - enough time for the initial radiation to fall to (relatively) safe levels. It takes at least 14 days for the fallout radiation to decay down to around 1% of its initial radiation.Fallout radiation will probably not be visible to the naked eye so unless you receive an 'all-clear' from a trusted source or you have the training and necessary equipment to detect radiation, your safest bet is to assume that you are within the fallout area and wait out the 14 days. - How to Build a Fallout Shelter

DON'T BUILD TOO BIG

Small shelters may be cramped, but they'll be strong. Stick to the bare essentials: a composting toilet, sleeping area and food/water stash - and use the Swiss government's guideline of nine feet squared of space per person.

CLEAR FLAMMABLE MATERIAL FROM THE BUILD SITE

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There's no sense surviving a nuclear attack, only to emerge from your shelter to a raging inferno, so make sure that anything that could be ignited by thermal radiation is cleared well away from your shelter.

5) Stockpiling Supplies

Whether you've shelled-out for solid-steel silo, or dug-out a ditch in your back garden, your survival depends as much on the contents of your fallout shelter as it does its construction. Detailing the entire contents of a well-stocked shelter warrants an entire guide in its own right, but to get you started, we can cover some of the fundamentals that every shelter should contain. Most people would need very little food to live several weeks; however, the time when survivors of blast and fallout would leave their shelters would mark the beginning of a much longer period of privation and hard manual labor. Therefore, to maintain physical strength and morale, persons in shelters ideally should have enough healthful food to provide well-balanced, adequate meals for many weeks. - Nuclear War Survival Skills

FREEZE-DRIED FOOD

Pre-prepared survival food, or military rations (often called MREs), will provide all the sustenance you'll need to survive, while staying fresh and edible for years. Better still, they'll take up minimal space; they don't require any kind of cooking equipment; and they'll contain a balanced range of nutrients and minerals (more than can be said for that bulk pack of Jerky you were eyeing up in Costco).

WATER, WATER, WATER

People can survive a long time without food; less so with water. Recently, the German government made a recommendation to stockpile half a gallon of water, per person, per day, in the event of an emergency.

MEDICATION

With your local pharmacy well and truly out of action (and if the Fallout videogame series is to be believed, home to several gangs of violent raiders) painkillers, bandages and antibiotics suddenly became worth their weight in gold.

WARM CLOTHES

When nuclear winter descends, you'll be grateful for the warm fleeces and waterproof jackets you stashed away.

OFFLINE WIKIPEDIA

If the idea of restarting civilisation without Google at your fingertips phases you (and it does me), go ahead and store an offline version of Wikipedia (yep - all of it) on an external hard-drive. Should you find a way to generate electricity, you'll suddenly be the smartest person in the world.

TOOLS

A wind-up radio will provide contact with the outside world (and hopefully relay that much needed "all clear" message); a lantern will provide light int the gloom of your shelter; a fire extinguisher will, y'know, extinguish fires; a Geiger counter will help you determine the (relative) safety of the world outside; and a map of the local area will help you find your way after you emerge from your shelter. Sure, there are more practical books you could stash away, but why bother? When you step out into a charred post-nuclear landscape, all thoughts of rearing livestock and restoring community will be out of the window - unless you've read The Road, and by comparison, realise that things could still be worse.

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15-YEAR OLD SCOTCH

Once you're in your shelter, the hard work is done. You've as prepared as you can be, and now, all that's left to do is ride out the storm - so take a good swig from the bottle of expensive Scotch you squirrelled away, and wait for the thunderous explosions to die down to a quiet murmur.

BUG-OUT BAGS

Most of these supplies will need to be stashed in your fallout shelter, but it's a good idea to hold back a small supply of key survival tools in a bug out bag: a small pack that can be grabbed at the first sign of trouble, containing everything you'll need to make it safely to your fallout shelter. The contents of your bug-out bag will vary according to your own needs, where you live, and your proximity to the shelter, but you can find a good catch-all packing list here.

5) Emerging into the World

You feel safe, tucked up in your steel-and-soil cocoon; and soon enough, the shuddering explosions have fallen quiet. You wait out the days (at least, you think they're days - it's hard to tell in the perma-twilight of your bunker), reading and re-reading your copy of The Road, chewing on a strip of jerky and sipping on a bottle of whisky - until eventually, you start to think it might be time to step back out into your new nuclear world.

But is it safe?

Hopefully, thanks to the diligent research you conducted earlier, your fallout shelter is a good few miles away from the nearest impact site, and even the wind-borne radiation has missed you entirely. But if you haven't been so lucky, you can dig out your Geiger counter, and try and work out exactly when the outside world will be safe to explore. One method we could use to estimate this is FEMA's 7:10 Rule of Thumb.

ashtales.com - How to Survive a Nuclear Attack | Ash Tales

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