If you’re thinking of building a safe haven in or near your house, hold off on digging a hole and constructing an underground bunker right now. In the end, a bunker might kill you.
Having a basement or cellar in your house may provide greater safety during an emergency. What should you do to prepare your basement to serve as a safe haven in an emergency, and what problems can you avoid?
Here’s a step-by-step guide to repurposing your existing basement into a safe nuclear fallout shelter. Let’s begin!
Having a safe haven in your basement is a great idea for a disaster preparedness scenario. Just step downstairs and close the door behind you if things feel a little shaky.
You need to make sure that the basement is structurally sound before using it as a safe place to stay during a natural or man-made catastrophe.
You may clean your basement from floor to ceiling by clearing off the clutter. Watch out for symptoms of structural instability, such as sagging drywall or cracked floors, as well as any indications that water is seeping into the area. If your basement collapses in on you at the first indication of danger, you don’t want to be stuck there with your emergency supplies.
If you’re not sure what to check for, you may want to contact the expertise of a contractor or building inspector. Bringing in an expert is never a bad idea, particularly if your safety is at risk.
Because water may leak through the walls, basements are notoriously wet. In addition, since this area is often located below ground level, water tends to accumulate here rather than evaporate or dry.
If you want to utilize your basement as a survival bunker, this might be a major issue.
Mold and mildew may grow in the basement if water is left unattended for a long time, which could be dangerous to anyone who is sheltering there, especially those who have respiratory problems like asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
Water in your basement may originate from a variety of sources, including water breaches in the walls and even the surrounding air. Find the source of the water and strive to stop it.
To avoid replacing your drywall and insulation because of leaks in your concrete walls, you should first strip the walls and paint them with a waterproof coating. Consider purchasing a dehumidifier to keep the area dry if humidity is a problem.
It’s important to remember that beginning with a strong, secure atmosphere is essential if you and your family ever need to make use of your basement as a survival bunker.
Bringing in air from the outside might be deadly if you’re evacuating after a nuclear explosion or if you’re dealing with an airborne virus danger.
A self-contained air storage and recycling system or a set of great filters will need to be used in these situations to make sure that the air in and out of your building is safe to breathe.
If you’re serious about having an air filtration system that can withstand the devastation of a nuclear catastrophe, I recommend consulting with an expert. Castellex has extensive expertise in the design and production of NBC (Nuclear Biological Chemical) air filtration/air supply stations for various uses.
An NBC system by Castellex is intended to pull air from outside, filter it, and release it into an enclosed room with enough force to provide positive relative pressure. Let’s take a closer look at NBC filter use and advantages:
Air within the shelter is pressurized to a greater pressure than the outside air while the filter is in operation, making it more stable. If there are any leaks, the filtered air within the shelter will flow outward, preventing unfiltered outside air from entering the shelter.
Your shelter’s seals on doors and hatches should not leak if there is no “overpressure.” Unfiltered (and potentially dangerous) outside air may enter the shelter only if there is excessive overpressure.
Air recycling and quality are two of the most important considerations when converting your basement into a safe haven. For the record, you may go days without food or drink, but just three minutes without air will cause you to perish.
Carbon dioxide comes from human breathing as a byproduct.
Approximately 20% of the atmosphere is made up of oxygen, and the remaining 0.04% is made up of carbon dioxide.
To survive, oxygen levels must remain above 19.5 percent (195,000 parts per million).Both low oxygen and high carbon dioxide levels should be monitored in your shelter, and alarms should be installed.
There is a lot of cheap carbon monoxide (“m”), but we’re talking about carbon dioxide (“d”) when discussing ventilation. Make sure you grasp this distinction. For emergency shelters, the following equipment is highly recommended:
These instruments may be integrated into one unit if there are more than three of them.
The next step is to begin stocking your basement with emergency supplies after it has been made secure and equipped to withstand a disaster. Your survival region is a place where you wish to stay for as long as possible if you can.
Water shouldn’t be a problem as long as the air is safe. In a survival scenario, the typical person requires one gallon of water every day. The other half is used for personal hygiene, such as washing your hands and brushing your teeth.
You have a few alternatives here, but municipal water is likely to be hazardous or unavailable, so it’s a good idea to have another source of water. A basement well may not be an option, so you’ll likely need to stockpile enough water for everyone in the home.
The plastic bottles or jugs that the water comes in are more than enough for short-term storage. In the long run, you’ll need something a bit more substantial and cost-effective. A waterBOB or 55-gallon drum is a preferable solution for storing tap water.
With a waterBOB, you can store water in your bathtub without having to worry about spills or odors since the bag holds 100 gallons of water.
To guarantee that your water is free of toxins, be certain that it has been treated. Having to cope with an apocalypse only to discover that your water is contaminated with algae or other germs is the worst possible outcome.
As a side note, I have a number of videos on water storage that may be helpful. The various free resources on water acquisition and purification are also worth a look.
Food preservation is the next topic on our list. The foundation of every survival room, including the one you’re constructing in your basement, is a store of emergency food.
With an adequate food supply, you won’t have to scavenge around the post-apocalyptic wasteland that was once your home. A well-stocked emergency food pantry should include canned items, bulk dry goods, and even freeze-dried meals.
Avoid dumping all of your equipment into a corner. For a long stay, you’ll need a thorough inventory and a method for keeping track of everything you’ll need. To avoid wasting food, you’ll need to set up your kitchen like this. You may rotate expired items into your normal pantry and use them up while replenishing your emergency stockpile as they near their expiry date. Good shelving may help you make sense of your items and keep them neatly arranged.
It’s important to remember that canned and dried foods are weighty. When it comes to organizing your emergency supplies, a cheap set of shelves from Walmart isn’t going to do the trick.
You may either buy some heavy-duty shelves or make your own, to guarantee that your food storage is safe. When possible, use anchors to attach your shelves to the wall, floor, or ceiling. This is especially important if you live in an earthquake zone.
Cooking using typical off-grid techniques like camp stoves in your basement is not recommended since it is an enclosed room and the carbon monoxide will build up, which may be dangerous. If you are unable to leave the house, MREs and canned food that has not been cooked may be substituted for proper cooking.
After a few weeks of dry rice and beans, you’ll certainly be yearning for some fresh food. If you’re settled in for a lengthy stay in your basement, you may want to look into producing some food.
This achievement may seem impossible. How can you grow plants without sunlight? You’ll never know until you try.
All you need is a decent supply of water and an off-grid power supply to keep your grow lights operating. With those two items, you can grow practically anything underground, as long as you’ve got the area for your plants.
In the case of anything like a nuclear attack, this becomes much more vital. Depending on your closeness to the fallout, cultivating crops in the soil surrounding your home could be difficult.
Many plants absorb radioactive isotopes from the earth, which contaminate the fruit and make it harmful to consume. Following a nuclear meltdown or strike, some of the isotopes left behind look a lot like the micronutrient’s plants get from the soil.
Hydroponics and aquaponics systems are particularly suited to indoor and subterranean conditions since they utilize water instead of soil.
Aquaponics may also incorporate fish. The plants filter their water, and in turn, the fish excrement functions as fertilizer for the plants.
Set up a few solar panels on the roof to keep your grow lights working, and you’ll find producing food in your basement a lot simpler than you may expect.
Meat, fruit, veggies, and dairy should be purchased in free-dried #10 cans or something comparable. It’s a bit more costly, but the quality of the food is excellent, it takes up little room, and it will endure for a long time to come. Because freeze-dried food has to be rehydrated, you’ll need to stock up on more water than you would if you were storing fresh food.
Hygiene is critical in a cramped location like a basement, particularly if it’s used by a large group of individuals. Bathing, brushing one’s teeth, and going to the restroom will all be necessary. Many completed basements include bathrooms, but if the grid fails and you lose electricity and water, your toilet may be rendered worthless as well.
Wet wipes and wash rags may help keep your body as clean as possible in the absence of showers, so stock up on the latter if showers are out of the question.
A 5-gallon bucket with a cover and a clean plunger may be used to build a DIY washing machine, and then the clothing can be hung out to dry.
Your basement survival bunker isn’t the place you want to be stranded if the rest of your home falls on top of you.
Keep various escape routes in mind while planning your basement survival bunker—just in case.
At the very least, most basements have two ways out: a door leading to the house and a door leading to the backyard. In certain cases, you may also be able to open the window.
In a situation, it may function as an escape route despite its high location on the wall. To get to it, make sure you have a sturdy ladder with a wide enough opening.
If your basement only has one exit, add a second one on the opposite side of the room from the present one. If you ever need to leave your survival bunker, make sure you have numerous exits planned.
How would your basement feel if the grid went down and you were suddenly left without electricity for days or weeks? Being buried far beneath provides a small amount of temperature regulation.
This doesn’t mean that you won’t have to deal with hot summers and freezing winters. The outside temperature will get into your house and survival shelter.
Don’t forget to add some insulation to the walls and ceilings while you’re fixing and strengthening them.
Adding insulation to the basement walls, as well as the soil that surrounds them, will make it simpler to keep the temperature stable.
You may use this set-up to safeguard your food supply as well, since even food can be harmed by very high temperatures.
You’ll also want to make sure you have adequate blankets, sleeping bags, and clothes on hand so that you don’t have to turn to potentially dangerous DIY ideas that might emit lethal carbon monoxide.
Sheltering in place is a fantastic choice if you’re far enough away from the tragedy that might spell the end of civilization as we know it. Having a basement makes things even simpler.
When deciding whether or not to take cover, use caution. Decide when to shelter in place and when to flee, and be prepared for either scenario. When it comes to the end of time, it’s better to be prepared rather than caught off guard.
Basements don’t have to be damp, cold, or uncomfortable places to take refuge. With a little forethought, you can transform your basement into a safe haven for you and your family in the event of an emergency.
Every prepared person should look into how to build a ground bunker. It is something that we can’t ignore, even if it’s out of reach for most of us financially. Escaping and avoiding the nuclear fallout and other disaster might be your top priority someday.
In any case, you’ll be safe and sound in a bunker under the surface. There is a lot of work involved, but the end result will be worth it in the long run, even if it takes some time.
