One Nation Underground

If you’re old enough, you may remember the Bomb Shelter craze that started during the height of the Cold War. Fallout shelters became somewhat of a fad; many middle class home owners were building bomb shelters in their basements or backyards. Today they make great wine cellars.

Even the government got into the act: the once Top-Secret Greenbrier Bomb Shelter was built to protect Congress from Soviet nukes. Today it’s a tourist attraction.

The fallout shelter craze may seem a little ludicrous now; like the tail fins on 1950’s and 60’s automobiles; but at the time, Americans were convinced that Khrushchev was going to do a Hiroshima on the USA.

But once those home-made bomb shelters owners found there was no real need to use them, and the new threats were hijacked airplanes and terrorist attacks, the bomb shelter almost disappeared from our culture. Almost: because bomb shelters are becoming an “item” once again. Today the threats aren’t Russian ICBMs; but 9/11-style terrorist attacks and government conspiracies. But you can escape it all by building or buying a bomb shelter, if you really want to. There are sources and instructions on the internet on how to build them.

A growing number of “survivalists” are building fortified shelters to protect against such threats as meteor strikes, extreme weather, global pandemics, nuclear war, political upheaval, natural disasters, economic collapse, alien invasions, generally anarchy, and even a “zombie apocalypse”, not to mention just general anarchy.

Ok, call them paranoid, but there is a growing market for survival shelters and it’s becoming big business. Dozens of companies have popped up on the internet that construct and install survival shelters, and it’s even created a “niche market” for homes with old Cold War bomb shelters. Be the first on YOUR block!

You never know.

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