Bunkers, fall out shelter, air raid shelters, safe room, bug-out room and bomb shelters are terms often used interchangeably. What I was thinking of upon starting this writing and research for this topic were the shelters that occasionally are included with the sale of residential real estate. These shelters are of the “cold war” age. A era that some remember from their youth in school which included fire drills as well as duck and cover air raid drills. Practice of ducking under your desk or going into hall crouching against the wall away from the possibility of shattering glass.
Air raid shelters came much earlier to other counties. England that was bombarded by V2 rockets from Nazi Germany. The United States version reached their peak of popularity in the late 1950s and early 1960s an activity that was spurred by the Gaither Report, this was followed a few years later by the Cuban missile crisis.
This notion of hiding under ground from danger is not new. Our very distant ancestors used caves to protect themselves from savage beasts and wild weather. In Crete (Derinkuyu )a tunnel system that could house an entire city was found, possibly to protect the populous from the Sea People.
In 1961 during the Kennedy administration congress voted to allocate $169. million toward the construction of air raid shelters.
How much value does adding a bomb shelter to a home add to it's value? If paying full retail price for an improve does not always add the same value to the selling price of a structure. If the construction is a needed improvement then, the value may increase greater than 100%, if the improvement is cosmetic such as granite counter top the improvement might only return 60% of the investment. Therefore it is important to receive the balance in happiness of the owner's base upon their own use. My suggestion would be to be certain the the shelter can do double duty. Make the shelter space a useful space as to apeal to a greater number of posible buyers when the day comes to sell.
There is a great difference between Bunkers, fall out shelter, air raid shelters, safe room and bomb shelters. Why do you need safety? Are you in a high crime area? Do you not trust the Putins of the World? Are you in the path of frequent hurricanes?
If you are in the direct path of high winds such as tornado, hurricanes or typhoons you might consider building your structure to with stand the force of such winds. Instead of a square building with a shape corners and a flat surface consider a round building that would not trap the air and receive the full force. I will develop a different page with links examples of such.
There are approximately 1200 tornadoes occur within the USA per year an can bring winds as high as of 300 miles per hour. As we saw in “The Wizard of Oz” people went below ground level for shelter. A hurricane might bring wind speeds of only 260 miles per hour however the difference is the among of water the storm bring with it from the ocean. A subterranean shelter could quickly fill with water. Wall thickness and ventilation systems would vary depending if the system had to protect against radiation or contagious microbes. Thus, If you expect a occasional tsunami the room that you build would not be buried many feet below ground unlike a person would if they were building for a direct nuclear strike.
