Even Costco has jumped on the bandwagon, delivering survival kits in handy backpacks — enough food for two weeks, knives, a hatchet, duct tape, a tent and first-aid kit.What I want to know is if zombies are mentioned anywhere in the marketing. Whichever, "prepping" is pretty mainstream now, if you can buy your pre-packed bugout bags on the next aisle over from the lawn chairs.
If we were still actually building new houses in this country, I wonder if backyard bomb shelters would be coming back into vogue? Oh, I'm sure they'd be called "survival safe rooms" or whatever, but the idea's the same.
When the herd gets this nervous, it doesn't take much to get 'em to stampede, is all I'm sayin'.
(H/T to SurvivalBlog.)
16 comments:
They would probably be inside the house - a new "panic room" if you will. After all, if you're not facing thermonuclear war, why dig into the ground when you can build it above ground level for far cheaper?
Dunno 'bout bomb shelters but there's an outfit up the road that seem to be doing a good business in "root cellars".
The herd that is more likely to panic first is led by Bernanke, Geithner, Boehner and ObaMao. Once THEY truly panic then that'll be the shot that gets the general-populace herd moving, albeit too late to save themselves
About the only construction actually going on here is remodeling. And almost every remodeling job includes a reinforced concrete "safe room," either above or below ground.
The people who make the "bury alone" underground shelters from 8 foot diameter steel pipe with welded on end caps seem to be doing well. I see a truck load of twelve footers at least once a week, with an occasional load of 18 to 24 foot hidey holes.
Stranger
"That's not a Bomb Shelter, that's just my Wine Cellar. I just use it to store my Guns out of the Reach of the Kids, you know."
Gotta learn the "Sooper Sekrit Code Language," Tam.
Garrett Lee, one word: "Tornado".
Yeh but sheesh it's Costco - there's no Quik-Clot in the kit and the batteries are old. And you will need a colorful-print Tommy Bahama lawn chair for when you're sittin' down digging through that backpack looking for a snack at the Government Encampment. :-)
The grasshopper was pretty scornful about the ants' preps before winter set in, too. Just sayin'...
DirtCrashr:
no digging for snacks, entry into a .gov camp will entail turning over all edibles to the ruling elite, er, camp officials, for equitable sharing of resources.
Those with known stocks of supplies (you got a "shelter", you've got supplies, will be the position of .gov), will be "requested" (required by threat of force) to turn over ALL supplies of food and other goodies for "the common good". And then you will have to go join the rest of the sheep if you want to get access to any food.
OPSEC, people. So the .gov locusts and other gangs don't strip you of provisions.
If you buy a tornado shelter, people don't think ill of you.
Funny, but living here in Midwestern fly-over country; we used to call it a 'storm shelter' and the entire wall filled with canned fruits and vegetables was just something Grandma did to save money. She was raising ten boys during the Great Depression, you know. As for saving every penny, keeping a garden and fruit trees, having an outhouse, the hand-pumped water well, the .22s, shotguns and deer rifles, that was just another fact of life on farm. Didn't realize that Grandma and Grandpa were actually "preppers." Guess they were wiser than I remembered.
You can buy kits to build your very own out of concrete blocks, with a poured concrete roof.
You can have quite extensive underground complexes built out of various modules.
Some are just storm shelters. Some have optional NBC air filters with blast gates and blast doors.
Someone just republished (as PDFs) a lot of the documents from Oak Ridge National Lab on how to build an emergency bomb shelter (including how to use tires to build blast gates for your ventilation. Which is needed if you are within a certain distance of ground zero for a nuclear blast)
I'm not sure this stuff ever died out completely, but there does seem to be a bit of interest in it today.
The radio here plays these public announcements of Morgan Freeman touting "Red Dirt Ready" disaster planning for Oklahomans. Sponsored by the Dept of Homeland Security. The focus is on power outages (like when the Smart Grid turns off the lights in the Midwest to keep New York and California lit) and major storms.
Homeland Security wants everyone ready to tape their windows and sit out a couple weeks when the radiation or chemical or biological fallout comes a-calling.
I note that the backpack doesn't include a hunting knife, a walking stick, baseball bat, or spear head, or other weapon or weapon component, to defend against, er, zombies.
I've felt for a while now that the "zombocalypse" was a convenient excuse for worried people who felt they were being paranoid to save up against the disaster they see coming. when it blows over and they're cleaning it all out of the closets a couple years from now they can blow it all off as a fad.
Feh, I'm just surprised to see you read anything in Pravda Canada. I'm from Toronto (nearby) and I didn't read that rag when I still lived there, let alone since escaping south.
I wouldn't be surprised if there were a few *interesting* basements now "Wine Cellars" in Suynyvale, it's were most-all the Lockheed/Ames engineers lived. I grew-up in The Radius, based on Moffett Field and the Blue Cube, and Interstate 280 was designed to be traveled at the escape-velocity of 120mph which a good-condition Ford Country Squire station wagon could approach if seriously pressed by a Mom-from-hell protecting her kids. The Shallow-Altans would all hei themselves up to Tahoe though.
Weather shelters seem to be booming. There's an outfit that moved in locally that simply puts little white signs reading "Haven Pod" all over the place. I had no idea what they did, but it worked; I was curious enough that when I saw a storefront with the name, I went out of my way to see what it was. They sell what appear to be (rather counterintuitively) portable tornado shelters.
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