The 5 Types of Idiots You Meet On The Internet When You Ask About Underground Shelters
These guys have no shortage of advice and the problem is that it is always wrong
I’ve been on the internet for 29 years.
Since my early days on the internet, the average IQ of internet browsers has plunged from dizzying heights to where it is very close to that of fresh water invertebrates today. It was much higher in the beginning. The average internet user in 1995 was usually at least 125+, just below real genius. This meant the entire flavor of discussions were infinitely better than the mouth breathers looking for naked photos of celebrities you expect to be commonplace in the present era. The grammar, spelling and grade levels of the posts and articles on the internet was routinely much more complex stuff with rich implications for what you might discover about what you didn’t know. The people you corresponded with seemed like they were offering honest advice - period - no ulterior motives. It wasn’t about business opportunities, rather it was about survivalists eager to share knowledge.
28 years ago on Alta Vista (before it got bought by Yahoo) you could find excellent resources for building safe, architecturally sound long habitability underground survival shelters. Really good step-by-step plans and pictorials. The search results from Alta Vista were uncensored, actual snapshots of a world wide web that was dynamically constructed by very bright people who had actually completed these projects, not just idly speculated about them on forums. All “search engines” in the modern era run strictly off political agendas which makes their results barely relevant. It is harder than ever to find useful, competent information on what remains of the internet today on any subject.
Then everybody else got their boots on. The hoi polloi who were modest camp followers at the outset learned enough about the internet to begin to change it into a gaudy red-light strip where they hocked an infinite sea of gibberish. Everything became a segueway to selling something.
This is much like the story of civilization itself. Societies and nations are founded by a handful of stalwarts with great faith, high ideals and strong principles.
Then the rest of the population show up and turn it all into a compost heap of schlock and pure cringe with wall-to-wall midget wrestlers with sparklers and dancing bears and vomit bag clowns.
Right around the time that the internet went to the dogs, the tone and tenor of anything posted on the internet turned into an ocean of dreck. You have to weed through a hundred people to hear one single bit of informed wisdom on civil defense, survival and prepping.
These same five guys will leap forward to answer your questions (with bad advice) every single time you ask about building an underground shelter. They post multiple responses (even worse advice) if you ask how to build an underground shelter cheaply and inexpensively. A fool who remains silent or admits he doesn’t know can be confused with a wise man. These types of internet travelers don’t let that stop them from offering whatever free-form drivel springs into their heads to people who may mistake them for knowledgeable on this subject.
The guy who knows so little about underground construction he believes anything can be buried and it will survive overhead backfill. He’s a killer and doesn’t know it. Anybody following his advice will be building a death trap and it’s only a matter of time before somebody gets killed inside it when the ceiling collapses. Hundreds of people have been killed in underground shelters because somebody underestimated the strength required to support backfill. Remember if the soil is wet it can weigh twice what it would if dry. These are the guys always advising people to bury sea containers. Without reinforcement inside, there is nothing more dangerous than a buried sea container. They collapse and will kill everybody inside. They are not designed to handle ceiling weight. If you insist on using them, they must be heavily reinforced in the interior, preferably with steel skeleton welded to the interior walls.
The guy who thinks traditional camping supplies are more than sufficient to stock an underground shelter with for heat and cooking. This guy tells you to bring butane bottles, propane tanks and other compressed flammable gas containers including portable stoves underground where they inevitably explode and kill everybody inside. That’s usually after asphyxiating the inhabitants with toxic exhaust and fumes. Hundreds of people have been killed by detonations of propane tanks in underground spaces because the blast pressure has no way to exit and simply expands in the lungs.
The guy who doesn’t understand how drainage works underground and likely does not know about all the problems encountered with flooding if the shelter is not properly situated, waterproofed and has a gravity resort to water intrusion. You could drown in one of these shelters and people often have. Bad drainage leads to corrosion, rust and mold that will make the shelter uninhabitable sooner or later. Use the “french drain” principle externally and downhill drainage internally to carry all water away from the site.
The guy who tells you he knows about “nukleer” shelters (he once watched “Threads”) and forgets to mention blast, skyshine, overpressure and decon. So far the casualty rate for his advice is low because we have not had a nuclear war yet. Just wait until we have one and people enter shelters built on such flawed visions of the environment that results. No survivors likely at all.
The guy who thinks that clean potable water, sanitation, disease prevention and vermin control are minor issues that can be dealt with on the fly. In fact, these are the most dangerous aspects of shelter life underground for more than a couple days. Dysentery, typhoid, strep, rats and food poisoning only seem trivial in the ten minutes prior to becoming life threatening. Any shelter construction that does not take these factors into account will be uninhabitable within a week of taking up residence in them. Biggest cause of death in emergencies is dehydration from diarrhea and other waterborne disease.
This stack is dedicated to providing the time honored basics you should know before breaking ground. It is critical to get these things right in advance of building an underground shelter. You will find that omission means you will have to try to retroactively provide for infrastructure that should have been built first, not last.
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