“Bunkers are, in fact, not a tool to survive a nuclear war.”
Truth Bomb
As more and more rich people rush to buy and build bomb shelters, experts suggest they’re little more than a psychological defense mechanism for wealthy people who want to feel a shred of control in an unpredictable world.
As the Associated Press reports, the bunker business was worth $137 million last year and is slated to grow to $175 million by the end of the decade, per analysis from BlueWeave Consulting.
According to experts who spoke to the outlet, however, these shelters do more to address atomic anxieties than nuclear realities. After all, you’re eventually going to need to crawl out of your bunker and face the horrific situation back on the surface.
“Bunkers are, in fact, not a tool to survive a nuclear war, but a tool to allow a population to psychologically endure the possibility of a nuclear war,” explained Alicia Sanders-Zakre of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons.
Radiation after a nuclear bomb detonation, as Sanders Zakre described it, is a “uniquely horrific aspect of nuclear weapons.” Even those who survive the fallout, which involves radioactive particles raining down on the area surrounding the blast, will be unable to escape its long-lasting, intergenerational health effects like those seen in Chernobyl after its reactor meltdown nearly 40 years ago. And that’s without getting into starvation, thirst, and the breakdown of social order.
“Ultimately,” she said, “the only solution to protect populations from nuclear war is to eliminate nuclear weapons.”
Shelter Skelter
Despite the promises made by companies catering to so-called “doomsday preppers,” nonproliferation expert Sam Lair told the AP that such efforts are likely futile.
“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,” Lair, a researcher at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, said. “The fundamental wrenching that it would do to our way of life would be profound.”
As Lair pointed out, politicians used to urge the citizenry to build their own bomb shelters half a century ago. Now, the “political costs incurred by causing people to think about shelters again is not worth it” — though that sort of concern clearly doesn’t extend to the big business of bunkers.
While doomsday prepping is now as American as apple pie, the revival of bunker culture isn’t limited to our shores: over in Switzerland, where each resident is guaranteed a spot in a bomb shelter in the case of nuclear war, the government is investing hundreds of millions of dollars to update its vast array of Cold War-era bunkers.
More on nuclear anxiety: US Military Alarmed by Russian Nuclear Weapon Platform in Orbit