Tag: doomsday preppers

Chapter 19: Why doomsday shelters in missile silos are an achy breaky big mistakey

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Oh, it seems like a beautiful idea: turning an abandoned missile silo into a super-secure doomsday shelter. Such a great thought that a number of people have done it, written about it, or put it in video games and movies.

Check out a story about one such Missile Silo of the Apocalypse:

Okay, you’ve got a giant, underground concrete structure that’s already built to military standards. Level after level that you can divide up and effectively defend. Add drinking water, fuel, generators, fridges, ginormous 4k televisions, a swimming pool, and stores of num-nums–bam, you’re set, as long as you can write a check for up to $3 million, right?

Here’s why all of that is, to be technical, a towering pile of stinking poppycock.

Reason No. 1: Your secret hidey hole is not secret

If they can’t find you, they can’t sneak into you secret bunker or cut you off from sources of food, fuel, and water. This is why being deep underground is so appealing.

This advantage is completely negated by having so much press and video online all about your Missile Silo of the Apocalypse.

No, they don’t reveal the exact location. Don’t need to–there are only so many missile silos in the United States, with a bazillion of them in Southern Canada (North Dakota and South Dakota). Oh look, here’s a map.

Map of western South Dakota with the locations of silos and control centers noted

Sure, there are silos in other states, and the Pentagon will not let you walk around active missile silos. They probably have land mines and razor wire and soldiers with rifles protecting those.

Old missile silos that got sold, now, will not be secret at all.

There will be all kinds of paper trails showing when a surplus missile silo went on sale, who bought them, and the location of that property. Even if all you knew was the name of the company selling missile silo condos, it would be easy to see what real estate they owned and exactly how much they pay in property taxes and where such properties were. In my little rural county, we have all that info available via a google maps thing and such. It’s fancy.

Even if you assume all of that isn’t true, the interets are powerful, and five random peoples on Reddit could watch some promos videos like the one above, examine them frame by frame and figure out exactly where the secret bunker is.

So yeah, your secret bunker is not so secret. Which makes it far less safe.

Reason No. 2: Giant target on your back

Imagine the apocalypse hitting tomorrow, and you are not wealthy enough throw a random million or three on a missile silo bunker.

Say you’ve got a family with two kids and no food. But you read about these silos, and there’s one twenty miles away, packed with drinking water and hot food and rich people who don’t have callouses on their hands and probably never served a tour in Afghanistan or Iraq, like you have, and yeah, you’re getting desperate.

Plenty of people will look at these missile silos as a great place to loot or take over.

With all the press and attention, the locations will not be a secret to locals. They will have known about the missile silos back when the military ran them, and chances are a lot of people have family and friends who worked to build these monstrous stuctures, or worked inside them before retiring from the service and settling down nearby.

Locals won’t just know about your bunker. They will be coming for it.

Reason No. 3: You won’t reach the missile silo

I will bet you my first-born and the title to my house that 99.9 percent of people who can afford to drop a bazillion dollars on a missile silo bunker 10 miles west of Nowhere, North Dakota, do not actually live anywhere near that place.

When things are normal, sure, they can fly in and spend a long weekend play-acting their Mad Max fantasies in the bunker before flying back to a mansion or yacht or vacation home in Palm Beach.

Once an apocalypse actually hits, those planes will not be flying. The highways will become impassable. You won’t be able to hike through 500 or 1000 miles of wilderness with your Louis Vuitton go-bag and make it all the way to Nowhere, North Dakota.

The zombies will feast upon your corpse before you make it 30 miles on foot.

Reason No. 4: Best-case scenario is still bad, you die, the end

Say all of the above doesn’t happen. The locals have their memories of all local missile silos wiped from their brains by the Men in Black, and Scottie transports your rich butt straight from wine tasting in the Hamptons to the living room of your fancy bunker.

Congratulations. You delayed death by months, maybe even a year. Two if you’re truly lucky. Because the fuel will run out, meaning the electricity–hot water, hot food, hot showers, all of that–will also run out. Your bright, comfortable bunker will turn into a dark and cold hole in the earth.

Reason No. 5: Better uses for a mountain of money

If you are part of the 1 percent, and have money to burn on a missile silo condo that you’ll never use, there are smarter ways to blow a million or three.

As we said before, the wealthiest people–in America and around the world–tend to live in large, coastal cities. New York, LA, Miami, London, Tokyo.

There’s an ocean, and beaches, and boats.

A boat is a great idea for the apocalypse. Especially if it’s (a) a sailboat, which would work even after fuel ran out, and (b) you live nearby. Which you likely do.

If there’s an apocalypse, you have zero worries about zombies and such after sailing out and dropping anchor. Easy peasy, lemon squeazy. Fish for your protein. Get into eating kelp and such. Grow some lemons or whatever on board to ward off scurvy.

Your main worry, long-term, will be pirates. Invest some of that one to three million into pirate-proofing measures. A flamethrower or three, and some long-range guns. Go wild.

Reason No. 6: This entire option is not an option for 99.99 percent of us

I started writing this series with the intention of being brutally practical.

Blowing one to three million on a missile silo condo is not just impractical, but wasteful and not an option for regular human beings like you and me.

If you can casually lay down a few million like that, email me and let’s spitball other fun ideas for spare cash sitting around. I HAVE MANY.

So what is smart?

Multiple options. Chances are, you drive to work. Could be 5 miles or 50 miles. You need an option near home and another option near work.

Cheap or free is best. Your options don’t need to be fancy. They need to be close enough and good enough.

Sustainable is key. Any solution that relies on fuel, ammunition, or electricity is not sustainable.

Let’s work though the problem. You need shelter, fire, food, tools, and medicine. Enough to get you through the transition from civilization to Barter Town.

Yet any such shelter is temporary.

Surviving any sort of apocalypse means returning to a nomadic life of hunting, gathering, and looting. Yes, the looting part is the most fun in movies and books. Just think about this, though. The only way you avoid nomadic life is to master farming. Unless your secret bunker has a working farm, stocked with crops and animals and equipment, you’re gonna be on the move.

Here are three examples of what would work for somebody on the move. First is a log cabin in the woods, hopefully near running water, as a long-term home base maybe to survive the winter after you stock up all spring and summer.

Second is a cheap sailboat, letting you be a nomad from the start. Get your WATERWORLD on.

Third is mountain bikes, backpacks, and tents, letting you and a team be mobile and able to set up camp anywhere.

What’s definitely not smart is a missile silo bunker. Though this story does tempt me into selling spots at my secret series of Survival Cabins in the Olympic Mountains.

Previous posts:

Fitness Tips for the Apocalypse: Chapter 3—Getting Around

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Fitness Tips for the Apocalypse

As a huge fan of zombie, Mad Max and apocalyptic movies, I had to ask the question: what would actually be smart, cheap and sustainable?

Read the first two posts here:

Fitness Tips for the Apocalypse: Chapter 1—You’re Doing It Wrong

Fitness Tips for the Apocalypse: Chapter 2—Lone Wolf in a Bunker vs Nimble Nomad with Friends

This chapter is about traveling, which you’ll need to do since hunkering down, bunker or no bunker, is a terrible option.

Most apocalyptic and zombie movies feature some sort of vehicle—Mad Max is packed with them. Though it would look amazing to ride a Harley through the wastelands, you would only look amazing for a week or two before that bike ran out of gas or attracted dozens of enemies with its insanely loud exhaust, advertising your exact location to anyone within a half a mile.

There are serious problems with relying on any sort of vehicle, no matter how cool it looks when Tom Hardy is driving it.

Though you can count on having to walk, hike, trudge and climb, are there any decent alternatives? In the end, I found three good options.

To get there, let’s talk through the problems and solutions for getting around without zombies going nom-nom-nom as you’re trying to siphon gas from a wrecked Ford Expedition.

Problem #1: Running out of guzzleline

Any serious, long-term apocalypse would mean nobody’s filling up the local Chevron anymore. Fuel would run out within weeks.

There are complicated ways of getting around this, such as using diesel engine and making your own biodiesel. Except that’s pretty involved even today, when you can do it in the comfort of your garage and can get new parts from the local hardware store.

Making your own fuel isn’t practical when you’re trying to survive in a wasteland. Neither is setting up Bartertown just to gas up your rig. We all know how well that worked.

Solution: Whatever options we pick need to be sustainable, and preferably not rely on any sort of fuel.

Problem #2: Roads and highways will be dangerous messes

You won’t be cruising along I-5 at 70 miles an hour—wrecked and abandoned cars will clog up the roads. Smart scavengers will also use obstacles and roadblocks to ambush anyone who does drive through.

A related issue is the fact that highways generally mean civilization, which should be avoided. They’d be trouble in an apocalypse, with millions of people streaming out from big cities and crowded suburbs to look for food. Looting the Safeway is not an original idea. Everyone will head there first with a can opener in their pocket.

Solution: Good options need to travel off-road, and this includes water. WATERWORLD may have been terrible, but a sailboat isn’t a bad idea at all.

Problem #3: Insanely equipped and armored vehicles are also insanely expensive

We’re shooting for cheap and sustainable here. A real military Humvee, armored personnel carrier or RV decked out with steel plates and spikes would cost a lot of money to buy and modify.

It’s also not smart to invest everything into a single vehicle.

Economists have a concept called “opportunity cost” that’s useful here. A plain vanilla RV can easily cost you more than $100,000. Armored cars will cost a lot more. If you can buy a good hiking backpack for $80 and fill it with the essentials for $300, you can equip all your friends, neighbors, coworkers and those college kids down the street with what they need to survive for the same price as that one vehicle.

Solution: Anything that makes our final list has to be cheap, or readily available as you wander around.

Problem #4: Breakdowns would be fatal

Say you have a great vehicle, and it goes off-road just fine. All your food and gear is happily stowed inside.

Any sort of mechanical breakdown would put you back on foot. And there would be breakdowns, since oil changes and mechanics would no longer exist. Even if you’re a trained mechanic, finding parts and tools would be tough.

Solution: This means adding “easy to fix” to our list.

Problem #5: Going to the air is completely nuts

A helicopter could get you in and out of trouble and a dirigible could stay safely above the fray for weeks or months.

And yes, a gyrocopter looks amazing. Combine a Carver trike with a gyrocopter and even James Bond would get jealous.

Fuel isn’t your real problem here, though. You won’t have to come down to the ground just for gas. You’ll need food and supplies, too. And that means landing. A lot.

Every time you land, that beautiful flying machine is sitting there, completely vulnerable. Zombies will swarm it, aliens authorities will confiscate it or scavengers will steal it.

Solution: We’re sticking to ground and water options.

Our three best options

Motorcycles would seem like a much better option than heavy, gas-guzzling RVs, Humvees and M-1 tanks stolen from the National Guard depot.

They’re nimble and could get around wrecks. Even better: dirt bikes, to easily cruise through logging roads, mountain trails and deserts.

Though this is appealing, fuel is still the sticking point. However: dirt bikes do lead us to the first smart, sustainable option.

Great option #1: Mountain bikes

Cheap to buy and equip.

Easy to fix.

Never need fuel.

If your mountain bike gets mangled, you can scavenge another. They’re everywhere.

There are even fat-tire mountain bikes, overbuilt for sturdiness rather than speed, with giant tires meant to go through mud, sand and snow.

Great option #2: Sailboats

A sailboat is a great idea. You can actually pick up small, used sailboats for pretty cheap.

They’re sustainable and have a built-in shelter, letting you snooze out of the elements. A sailboat also means an easy supply of fish.

You can anchor the boat far from shore to stay safe, or use it to set up a series of island bases as you follow the seasons and migrating animals. A sailboat also gives you the ability to carry a lot of friends, food and gear with zero penalty in terms of fuel, since all you need is wind.

A decent sailboat gives you all the benefits of a bunker with none of the drawbacks.

There will be other people with the same idea, and therefore avoiding other boats is smart. But if you know how to work sailboats, and teach your friends to sail, you can liberate marinas along the way and get an entire fleet of boats.

Calling yourself the Dread Pirate Robers is optional.

Great option #3: Horses

If you know how to deal with them, though, this is a smart, sustainable way of getting around. Horses can travel over tough terrain and make it easy to escape trouble.

Since you’ll be traveling in a group as a Nimble Nomad with Friends instead of a Lone Wolf in a Bunker, a group of horses is even smarter because they can feed themselves and reproduce, two tricks that mountain bikes and sailboats still haven’t mastered.

Once again, Kevin Costner has a great idea in a terrible movie.

Bottom line

Despite the fact that Kevin Costner should never again star in an apocalyptic movie, he nailed two out of three best options: sailboats and horses. Well done, Costner.

Next week: Chapter 4—One Backpack and a Pair of Hiking Boots