Bomb Shelter

 

Growing up in the fifties and sixties, bomb shelters were a real thing. I remember going to the county fair and they had one built right outside one of the buildings that housed exhibits. The schools I attended had the yellow fallout shelter signs on them, and I assume they had supplies stashed away somewhere for the students and nearby residents in the event of a nuclear event. I've been reading quite a bit about the chances of just such an event happening in the near future. There's a lot more ways to make that happen - doesn't need to be just one big one like Hiroshima, could be lots of little ones sprinkled around the country. If they could fly planes into multiple targets like on 9-11, no reason they couldn't do a similar thing with some sort of nuclear device. Especially since who knows who has snuck across the border - could be a couple of physicists from China in among the millions. 

I'm not overly concerned having lived through the Khrushchev years, but I've pretty much lost all faith in the federal government looking out for my well being. Even if I lived through an initial blast in the Chicago or Whiting, IN area, the long term effects would be enough to probably finish me and millions of others off - radioactive soil, nuclear winter - I'm going to run out of beans long before I'll be able to eat fruit from the trees and grow any vegetables. I imagine the chickens won't survive either.

I ran across an interesting article that got me thinking about all this, as well as several other blogs I read on a regular basis and the Retired Teachers Association newsletter that came in the mail yesterday. While I doubt seriously there's much I can do to prepare for a nuclear attack, I did follow the linked  article's advice when I was younger, and it works, whether you're preparing for war or peace. Might want to check it out.