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I respect your right to build whatever you want for any possible event, but I'd be most interested in a shelter for solar electromagnet radiation - short term - days or short weeks. Anything that would require me living underground in a shipping container for a year+, no thanks.

I don't see nukes in my future, (TPTB want a clean Earth for themselves), but NASA was very vocal about us seeing serious solar flares in 2012 - (back in 2005/06). Plus events like these have happened before. So many damn things that COULD happen in the next few months or years it is hard to pick LOL. I see it as gambling. What are the odds, the costs, the benefits, etc. As for living in fear, no thanks. If my time is up, it is up, BFD. NASA UPGRADES 2012 SOLAR STORM WARNING - LEARN HOW TO PREPARE
 
A rented bobcat, about 12 feet (20 feet for 2 stacked containers) deep of digging (with entry ramp for the semi carrying the containers) some old railroad rails for reinforcement on the sides and top, either a 4ft wide pipe for a vertical entry or an 8ft pipe for a diagonal entry, a rented plasma cutter, oh, and don't forget some air vents, usually a distance away from the dig site and concealed and sealed from weather and forced entry.
...if you actually needed a shelter that is.

Don't forget the disaster-specific accessories:
Nuclear: sheets of lead 1mm-1/4in thick, depends on distance to ground zero (don't forget the NBC filters on the air vents.)
EMP: copper or brass mesh, as small as possible, and a grounding rod (be sure to not let it touch the metal of the containers or it's useless)
Earthquake: ..well, might be screwed, depends on how close it is.
Flood: ..grow some gills.
Upheaval: ..just hide for a while, see who wins.
Or, just practice bending far enough to just kiss your own butt goodbye.
If you're gonna be serious about a shelter, be serious, get an engineer or a contractor, put a burn-the-blueprints clause in if you're paranoid, put down the stacks of cash, and get to work. Otherwise, start digging a hole. 'cause a magic fortress ain't gonna just show up. I would be, but I don't have the money or property for it.
 
Well a couple friends of mine bought starter homes years ago, the houses were built in the 50's or early 60's.

The person who owned them during that tiime, had first they reinforced the structure by putting in extra cross beam and then extra support beams. Thne took a section and put in form, conduit for wiring and poured concrete. Walls had rebarb and were 8 to 10 inches thick. The room was 8 feet wide by 20 feet long. The door was a heavy metal on 4 hinges.

My buddy kept a set of cots, in there and few other items, the problem was the room was very humid and had a sump pump that ran all the time.

Which brings me to good point, make sure the place you choose is not a high water table, or install really good drainage around what you build above and below ground.

Another friend hada similar house with really drainage and his sump pump hardly ever ran, even durea heavy rain season.
 
i worry more about emp or solar storms too.we have always had these but we have never relyed so much on technology before and if our infastructure gets knocked out my daughters wont be able to go on facebook so to them the world will be over.
 
i worry more about emp or solar storms too.we have always had these but we have never relyed so much on technology before and if our infastructure gets knocked out my daughters wont be able to go on facebook so to them the world will be over.

Trust me,if they don't have Facebook,your world might end too.
 
IIRC it only takes something like 6" soil or 1/4" lead to block radiation......if you bury the shipping container, you're sheltered from radiation. Now unless you're only planning on using it for a very short term like to survive an initial blast,etc....got to figure out how to filter air flow, supply clean water, and carry away waste to a safe distance? Lighting that doesn't use up your oxygen might be nice too in a little dark hole, but you could sleep a lot i guess.
 
i worry more about emp or solar storms too.we have always had these but we have never relyed so much on technology before and if our infastructure gets knocked out my daughters wont be able to go on facebook so to them the world will be over.

Ashton Kutcher might be a twit, but he said the exact same thing. He runs everyday and trains in Israeli martial arts. Has said that in a SHTF scenario that the greatest panic will come from the twittering twits not being able to access their social networking.
 
Ashton Kutcher might be a twit, but he said the exact same thing. He runs everyday and trains in Israeli martial arts. Has said that in a SHTF scenario that the greatest panic will come from the twittering twits not being able to access their social networking.

Sadly, that's true the more I think about it. The panicked masses might be more dangerous than any explosion or power outage.
 
I respect your right to build whatever you want for any possible event, but I'd be most interested in a shelter for solar electromagnet radiation - short term - days or short weeks. Anything that would require me living underground in a shipping container for a year+, no thanks.

I don't see nukes in my future, (TPTB want a clean Earth for themselves), but NASA was very vocal about us seeing serious solar flares in 2012 - (back in 2005/06). Plus events like these have happened before. So many damn things that COULD happen in the next few months or years it is hard to pick LOL. I see it as gambling. What are the odds, the costs, the benefits, etc. As for living in fear, no thanks. If my time is up, it is up, BFD. NASA UPGRADES 2012 SOLAR STORM WARNING - LEARN HOW TO PREPARE


A helpful tidbit for you. Anything stored in a microwave oven would survive an EMP or Coronal Mass Ejection. they have built in Faraday cages to shield you from the harmful microwaves emitted, but that works both ways.
 
There's tons if info out there about containers and there really not that a great of an option overall from what I've read. There really just not strong enough on the tops or sides to support the soil weight unless extensively reinforced and don't really have a great deal of longevity.
A neat set-up I have seen though and is something that a had friend built.

He had a set back in a ledge several hundred yards from his house way out in the woods and on his property. He basically built basically a simple semi domed structure consisting of a light weight 2x4 frame as a form with a blue tarp plain window screen and chicken wire stretched over it and stapled down for a starting layer of concrete then he did multiple layers of concrete over that with extra reinforcement added as he added concrete till it ended up being about a foot thick total. He did a single door, an escape tube hidden behind a built in closet in the bed room made of a heavy drain/culvert pipe about 4' and 6" PVC piping for venting the structure.

It's basically it is a roughly 20'-25' dia cement dome set back into the "jag" in the ledge face ,back filled with soil all around with a berm in front of what little is exposed to view. And all of it is covered with 2-3' of soil with plantings all around to totally hide it from view. You can actually walk 5-6 feet from the entrance hidden behind a huge natural boulder and unless you knew it was there , you'd never even see it or know there was something there. And then you kinda have to follow a narrow zig zag path behind that boulder to even access the "camp".

It's a pretty neat "man cave and hunting camp " at this point. But should give all the protection you'd ever need if you did need a shelter. If I recall is total costs ran about 20 K about 10 years ago with him doing all the work and using the mid size John Deere backhoe/bucket loader he owns to build it and it was completed in about 1 year of spare time involved. You could darn near heat the place with a candle too, no really but the only reason he has any stove at all is to keep the moisture/humidity out. Then his heat source is only a homemade stove made from a small 20lb propane cylinder with the stove pipe going through the escape tunnel and exiting several yards away from the main entrance so you never see any smoke from it.

But it's almost like most any small house would be with 2 rooms and a bath, and all the amenities, only cement and buried into the ledge with only the door exposed,,sorta.

Not that I'd ever build a shelter for myself mind you , but that's is a real nice simple, inexpensive set up I saw and we've been using it as a hunting camp sense it was built and it works very well to sleep 6 people comfortably between the bedroom with 2 bunks and 2 fold out sofa beds in the main living area. Only bad part, no windows. But he did a neat fake window with a pastoral scene wall paper deal you can buy commercially decoupaged to the wall. It's damn near like looking out a real window.
Without a doubt it would be great for long term survival, or even a home for a single person or couple, done on the cheap. Relatively speaking. It's the neatest set up I've ever seen when it comes to a shelter anyways.

Other than a converted missile silo emplacement I saw over in Upstate Ny a few years back,,but that's a whole different ball game there. Last I knew that is on the market for a mere 1.8 million !! Yikes!!!

Just a LITTLE BIT outa my price range!!:eek:
 

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