Nuclear bunker sales increase, despite warnings they won't provide protection | Hacker News Reader

Nuclear bunker sales increase, despite warnings they won't provide protection

npr.org

15 pointsbelter31 comments

- "Meanwhile, government disaster experts say bunkers aren't necessary. A Federal Emergency Management Agency 100-page guide on responding to a nuclear detonation focuses on having the public get inside and stay inside, ideally in a basement and away from outside walls for at least a day. Those existing spaces can provide protection from radioactive fallout, says FEMA."

What an irresponsible and reckless misrepresentation on NPR's part. The fact FEMA recommends this doesn't mean that it's safe—most people who follow that advice will still die—it just means it's the minimal advice they can plausibly offer to limit aggregate deaths, to people who don't have the a budget for or interest in building fallout shelters.

Can you hide from wildfire smoke by merely closing your windows? Nuclear fallout is a finer particulate than that smoke.

The Cold War-era guidance I’ve seen online said that the main threat is aggregate fallout in the first few days, and that it doesn’t take all that much mass and distance to attenuate the radiation. So if you are in a basement surrounded by earth, with a multi-story house on top with the doors and windows closed, it sounds like you’ll do nearly as well as someone with a bunker.

There's another key difference: normal buildings lose all of their windows in a large explosion. Alex Wellerstein's calculator says that "glass windows can be expected to break" at 1 psi (7 kPa) overpressure, i.e., out to 13.9 km distance (!) from the smallest-size modern MIRV warhead (350 kilotons).

https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/

(Do you happen to have a link to that specific Cold War guidance?)

Many (most?) parts of the US don’t have basements, and/or don’t have multiple stories.

Duck and Cover ought to be enough for anybody.

> Can you hide from wildfire smoke by merely closing your windows?

Um, yes? That's what we do every summer. Very little smoke gets in compared to an open window

Blast overpressure has a way of opening windows. And they're hard to close once the glass has become shrapnel.

"very little radiation" is still too much.

bananas are slightly more radioactive than background radiation

Everyone who eats a banana (eventually) dies. Coincidence? I think not!

"very little nuclear fallout radiation" is still too much.

Background radiation and bananas won't stay in your lungs... normally.

This article is weird. It flip flops between "bunkers are useless, you can hide in your basement" and "bunkers are useless, it won't protect you from a nuke". Which one is it? It doesn't even try to explain why bunkers "won't provide protection". The closest it gets is "I think the aftermath [of a nuclear exchange] will be uglier than many people think", but that instantly falls apart if the goal of the bunker isn't to stay 100% unscathed from a nuclear blast, but rather to increase the chances of survival.

It's the doublethink of someone who's trying to assert an argument for reasons under than actually understanding the technical question, or caring about the technical answer; and sees no problem in taking two different rhetorical paths to get that predetermined conclusion, even if they're mutually contradictory.

(It's also like the legal concept of "pleading in the alternative" (?): "my client never borrowed that car; and it was already damaged when he received it; and he returned it in perfect condition". Permissible for defense lawyers—utterly discrediting for journalists).

>The closest it gets is "I think the aftermath [of a nuclear exchange] will be uglier than many people think", but that instantly falls apart if the goal of the bunker isn't to stay 100% unscathed from a nuclear blast, but rather to increase the chances of survival.

It's like fantasizing about surviving in a zombie apocalypse. It may seem cool and exciting, but the two most probable outcomes are either you'll be miserable from the neverending fight for survival, or you're a zombie yourself.

In case of nuclear war, the best option is to start heading towards the likeliest targets and go in a relatively quick and painless way. There's nothing pleasant about a post-nuclear-war world.

My assumption is that they're hanging it all on this:

>"Even if a nuclear exchange is perhaps more survivable than many people think, I think the aftermath will be uglier than many people think as well" / "The fundamental wrenching that it would do to our way of life would be profound."

While I feel elaborating more would be helpful, it's probably not something that could be reasonably well covered in the scope of the article.

Sounds like they failed to perform a threat analysis. And that applies to both sides. The buyer thinks that the bunker will protect them no matter what, and the journalist takes the opposite and equally wrong position that the bunkers are virtually useless. As you correctly point out, they are useful in some situations, and for some people who can afford it they are worth the cost.

>government disaster experts say bunkers aren't necessary. A Federal Emergency Management Agency 100-page guide on responding to a nuclear detonation focuses on having the public get inside and stay inside

>despite warnings they don't work

The first quote is a terrible misinterpretation of underlying reality, and the article headline commits an even worse sin of outright lying.

Given the mechanics of nuclear effects and especially fallout, of course bunkers work. They absolutely do provide protection and do so better than any improvised alternative except living way outside of any blast or fallout zone.

As for the government's statements about measures to take, they're given as a practical piece of advice for millions of people who couldn't afford a fallout bunker or have no space for one. It's the best the government can recommend knowing how few have the means for their own personal, specialized shelter.

However if you could buy one and install it, then it would absolutely help and in no way could you say that it doesn't provide protection. The government isn't saying that either. The headline editor at NPR is either an idiot or lazy.

The article touches on a key point here (emphasis added):

> The report says major growth factors include "the rising threat of nuclear _or terrorist attacks or civil unrest_.

And then dances around that point to instead just present the raw views on each side of the "nuclear war" story. I'm left wondering if the nuclear conversation is a distraction and the real increase is just the number of people who feel society is generally on edge for one reason or another (with less than half of that being nuclear war).

If the price and market size numbers are to believed, this is an article about what several thousand (extremely well off) people may purchase each year over the next 10 years. The average prepper seems to be on the rise too though, they just aren't buying $500,000 bunkers about it.

my plan for nuclear war is to get close enough to a potential target site, go outside, put on a pair of sunglasses and a Hawaiian shirt, and hope the bast wave will take me out. I have no desire to live through the aftermath.

If you really feel this way, why leave it to chance? They might not nuke that target. Far more reliable to commit suicide the old fashioned way as soon as you hear the news reports.

I am irritated by assertions of this type. They belong in a similar category to "just shoot me if I ever get [old/ugly/stupid]" - meaningless hot air when push comes to shove. In reality, when faced with death, people struggle to survive until they have no struggle left.

Know how many people in Hawaii committed suicide in 2018, when so many genuinely thought the nukes were coming? Zero.

That is a good point. I'd probably wait until I saw the flash and then run out to catch the shockwave.

also, don't forget there are fast and slow forms of suicide. Fast is with a gun or overdosing on a drug. Slow is not taking any precautions from fallout or refusing treatments for cancer or end-stage kidney disease. Sometimes, just giving up is a form of suicide.

I suggest you look up deaths of despair.

Euthanasia is a thing.

I have a personal beef with cockroaches and I'll make dam sure it doesn't beat me in a mere nuclear war.

It is US government policy not to promote the building of nuclear bomb shelters (as it has been for decades) as preparedness is seen (by both the US and Russia) as a provocation.

They will build the Aegis, THAAD, and Patriot, and its not a provocation. But let the common person be empowered to do something within their own capabilities on that and now its provocation. Telling how that works. Maybe if bomb shelters were sold and built by one politically connected business, it also wouldn’t be a provocation.

You're right, those aren't provocations in the context of nuclear deterrence. The OP didn't do a great job about explaining the context but he meant it in the context of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deterrence_theory

Everything is a provocation to a predator

You're misunderstanding and fixating on "Russia bad". There is a real issue the comment you responded to is referring to that comes out of the game theory around nuclear deterrence.

The basic idea is that the more you imply you're able to withstand a nuclear strike the higher probability you'll be willing to launch a first strike. This means that in an effort to deescalate both sides avoid appearing able to withstand a nuclear bombardment

I bet the hardest thing about surviving a nuclear war would be remembering how important and reasonable it seemed before the war to make those bombs and use them.

> The market for U.S. bomb and fallout shelters is forecast to grow from $137 million last year to $175 million by 2030, according to a market research report from BlueWeave Consulting.

Meh.

Heck inflation could explain that growth.

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