My neighbors already think I'm crazy for drilling a well in this fancy subdivision. They'll really get to talking when I build a fallout shelter. I need to find a source for alternative designs. I'd like to use the shelter as a root cellar after the Ruskies get finished with us and, for instance, I don't know if the walls should be concrete or dirt. Any ideas?

-- James (b@b.com), June 03, 1999

Answers

A few things I recall from the true, 1950's fallout shelter, is that they were made of concrete, including the walls and ceiling. The ones I have been in always have at least one 90 degree turn in the stairs or entrance as the primary beam of radiation does not turn corners.

-- smfdoc (smfdoc@aol.com), June 03, 1999.

James, I've been thinking about building/digging a root cellar for a while, too. I remember seeing a link in some forum somewhere. I did a search and found all kinds of stuff (too many URLs to list here.)Check out "root cellars" at www.hotbot.com .I found a bunch of stuff.

-- Roger (pecosroger@netscape.net), June 03, 1999.

James - So you say you want to build a "wine cellar" eh? The book Nuclear War Survival Skills by Cresson Kearney orderable via telephone from http://www.oism.org has several designs. Another source is http://www.tacda.org The American Civil Defense Assoc. As for materials go concrete, corrugated steel culvert, treated landscaping timbers, freshly felled wood (wrapped on sides and top with heavy plastic), molded plastic, fiberglass, (never heard of it being done but ferrocement would work), and then there are the temporary (a year or so) shelters from all sorts of stuff, hollow core doors, pipe frame covered with burlap, fresh wood (no treatment or wrap), car bodies, all sorts of stuff.

Here are some threads on this forum that will get you started http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=000oYq http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=000puv http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=000q7O and http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=000szG if you read those threads and follow the mentioned links you will know ALOT about making "wine cellers".

TACDA used to sell plans (very detailed plans, materials list, etc) for an add on fallout shelter as well as plans for hazard mitigating houses.

-- Ken Seger (kenseger@earthlink.net), June 03, 1999.

Sniff, sniff sniff. Doodum, doodum doodum.

-- Carlos (riffraff1@cybertime.net), June 04, 1999.

James,

Find Joel Skousen's book on building a high security shelter. He covers a number of details you'll be interested in incorporating into your new root cellar. Just run his name on your favorite search engine (or try http://www.infind.com and put his name in quotation marks to search it as a phrase).

-- Lee (lplapin@hotmail.com), June 05, 1999.