Nuclear bunker sales increase, despite expert warnings they aren’t going to provide protection
When Bernard Jones Jr. and his wife Doris built their dream home, they didn’t hold back. A cave pool with waterfall for hot summer days. A home cinema for cozy winter evenings. A fruit orchard to harvest in the fall. And a huge underground bunker in case disaster strikes.
“The world is not getting any safer,” he said. “We wanted to be prepared.”
Under an inconspicuous metal hatch near the private basketball court is a hidden staircase that leads down to rooms with beds for about 25 people, bathrooms and two kitchens, all supported by a self-sustaining energy source.
With water, electricity, clean air and food, they even felt prepared for any disaster a nuclear explosionat their rural home in California’s Inland Empire.
“If there was a nuclear attack, would you rather go into the living room or go into a bunker? If you had one, you’d go there too,” said Jones, who said he reluctantly sold the house two years ago.
Global security leaders warn that nuclear threats are increasing as arms spending increases rose to $91.4 billion last year. At the same time, sales of private bunkers are increasing worldwide, from small metal boxes to crawl into to extravagant underground mansions.
Critics warn that these bunkers create the false perception that nuclear war is survivable. They argue that people who plan to survive a nuclear explosion are not focusing on the real and current dangers posed by nuclear threats, and on the critical need to stop the spread of weapons of mass destruction.
Meanwhile, government disaster experts say bunkers are not necessary. A 100-page directive from the Federal Emergency Management Agency on responding to a nuclear blast focuses on allowing the public to go indoors and stay indoors, ideally in a basement and away from exterior walls for at least a day. Those existing spaces can provide protection against radioactive fallout, FEMA says.
But increasingly, buyers say bunkers provide a sense of security. According to a market research report from BlueWeave Consulting, the U.S. fallout shelter market is expected to grow from $137 million last year to $175 million by 2030. The report says key growth factors include “the increasing threat of nuclear or terrorist attacks or civil unrest.” .
“People feel uncomfortable and want a safe place to house their families. And they have the attitude that it’s better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it,” he said Atlas Survival Shelters CEO Ron Hubbard, amid showers of sparks and the loud hum of welding work at his bunker factory, which he claims is the largest in the world, in Sulfur Springs, Texas.
Hubbard said that COVID lockdowns The Russian invasion of Ukraine and the outbreak of the war between Israel and Hamas boosted sales.
On November 21, in the hours after Russia’s very first use of an experimental hypersonic ballistic missile To attack Ukraine, Hubbard said his phone rang non-stop.
Four callers ended up buying bunkers in one day, he said, and even more ended up ordering doors and other parts for shelters they were already building.
Hubbard said his bunkers are built for all disasters.
“They’re good for everything from a tornado to a hurricane to nuclear fallout to a pandemic and even to a volcano erupting,” he said, waving his arms toward a huge warehouse where more than fifty different bunkers are under construction were.
With a loaded shotgun at arm’s length and metal window screens to block nearby Molotov cocktails, Hubbard said he started his business after building his own bunker about a decade ago. He says callers ask about prices – $20,000 to millions, average $500,000 – and installations – they can go just about anywhere. He said he sells at least one bunker most days.
In Hubbard’s doomsday scenario, global tensions could lead to World War III, a situation he is prepared to endure.
“The good news about nuclear warfare,” he said, “if there ever was one, is that you can very well survive it if you don’t die in the first blast.”
He’s not wrong, say U.S. government disaster preparedness experts.
“Look, this fallout exposure is completely preventable because it’s something that happens after the detonation,” said Brooke Buddemeier, a radiation safety specialist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where the U.S. government designs nuclear weapons. Buddemeier and his colleagues are tasked with evaluating what can happen after an attack and how best to survive. “There will be a pretty obvious nuclear explosion, a big cloud. So just getting inside, away from where those particles are falling, can keep you and your family safe.”
Buddemeier and others in the U.S. government are trying to teach Americans — who decades ago hid under desks during nuclear attack exercises — how to respond.
After a deadly and deafening blast, a bright flash and a mushroom cloud, it will take about 15 minutes for the fallout to arrive for those a mile or more away from ground zero, said Michael Dillon, a scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
“It will literally be sand falling on your head, and you will want to get out of that situation. You want to get to your most robust building,” he said. In their models, they estimate that people may need to stay indoors for a day or two before evacuating.
The government’s efforts to educate the public were subsequently revived a false alarm rocket alert in Hawaii in 2018 caused widespread panic.
The emergency warningwhich was sent to cellphones across the state just before 8:10 a.m. said: “BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INCOMING TO HAWAII. SEEK DISTINCTION IMMEDIATELY. THIS IS NOT A DRILL.”
The next forty minutes saw traffic jams, workers running in and out of buildings, families huddled in their bathrooms, students gathering in gyms, motorists blocking tunnels, all trying to find shelter, without any clear idea of what ‘seek immediate help’. shelter” actually meant.
Today, the federal government is offering a guide to preparing citizens for… nuclear attack which advises people to find a basement or the center of a large building and stay there, possibly for a few days, until they are told where to go.
“Gently brush your pet’s coat to remove any fallout particles,” it says, adding that the 15-minute delay between the bomb and the fallout “gives you sufficient time to avoid significant radiation exposure.”
Jeffrey Schlegelmilch, director of the FEMA-backed National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University, said that “the scenarios of a nuclear detonation are not all or nothing.”
If a small number of weapons were detonated, instead of all-out war, he said, sheltering in a large building to avoid the consequences could save lives.
Non-proliferation calls for criticism of bunkers, shelters or any suggestion that nuclear war is survivable.
“Bunkers are not, in fact, a tool for surviving a nuclear war, but a tool for enabling a population to psychologically endure the possibility of nuclear war,” Alicia Sanders-Zakre said at the conference. International Campaign for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons.
Sanders-Zakre called radiation the “uniquely horrific aspect of nuclear weapons” and noted that even surviving the consequences cannot prevent long-term, intergenerational health crises. “Ultimately, the only solution to protect the population from nuclear war is to eliminate nuclear weapons.”
Researcher Sam Lair of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies says American leaders stopped talking about bunkers decades ago.
“The political costs of getting people to think about shelters again are not worth it to leaders because it forces people to think about what they would do after a nuclear war,” he said. “That’s something that very, very few people want to think about. This makes people feel vulnerable.”
Lair said building bunkers seems pointless, even if they work in the short term.
“Even if a nuclear exchange may be more survivable than many people think, I think the aftermath will also be uglier than many people think,” he said. “The fundamental damage this would do to our way of life would be profound.”
That has been a serious concern of Massachusetts Congressman James McGovern for almost fifty years.
“If we ever get to a point where all-out nuclear war breaks out, underground bunkers will no longer protect people,” he said. “Instead, we should invest our resources and our energy in trying to talk about a nuclear weapons freeze in the first place.”
He then said, “We must work toward the day when we get rid of all nuclear weapons.”
Year after year he introduces legislation encouraging non-proliferation, but looking out his office window at the Capitol, he said he is disappointed by the lack of debate over the $1 trillion in spending on construction and modernize the US arsenal.
“The stakes, if a nuclear weapon is ever used, is that millions and millions and millions of people will die. It is truly shocking that we have world leaders casually talking about the use of nuclear weapons. I mean, it would be catastrophic, not just for those involved in the nuclear weapons exchange, but for the entire world.”
McGovern opposed FEMA’s efforts to prepare the public for a nuclear attack by advising people to seek shelter.
“How stupid to say that we all just need to know where to hide and where to avoid most of the consequences of nuclear radiation. I mean, that’s really chilling when you hear people trying to rationalize nuclear war that way,” he said.
Nuclear war was far from one couple’s thoughts when they went house hunting in Southern California a few years ago. They wanted a home to settle down and raise their family, and they needed additional garage space. They saw an online advertisement for a home with at least eight parking spaces. There was a metal hatch on the basketball court. Below that was a bunker.
This was Jones’ former home, which, according to Jones, was for sale for family reasons.
The husband, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of family privacy concerns, went ahead and bought Jones’ house, bunker and all. They aren’t really concerned about nuclear war and haven’t spent a night in the bunker, but they did store food and medical supplies there.
“We told some of our friends, if something crazy happens and gets bad, get here as soon as you can,” the man said. “It does give a feeling of security.”
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Mendoza reported from Sulfur Springs, Texas, and Livermore, California.
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Additional AP coverage of the nuclear landscape: https://apnews.com/projects/the-new-nuclear-landscape/