Happy Thursday Fixers! Phew, what with all the war talk these last couple weeks, on top of the nigh improbable inevitable doomsday glinting at us from 2012, I thought today we might take a look at how one Canadian by the name of Bruce Beach is making sure humanity survives the nuclear holocaust. Take a look at this swanky fallout entrance.
You see, it all started in 1980 when Beach, a radiological scientific officer, decided that his line of work was going to kill us all. I can only imagine what began as a guilt ridden hobby ended up blossoming into a full on obsession. Over the next thirty years, Beach and his friends and family used 42 decommissioned school buses to form a 10,000 square foot underground city with enough room and supplies to house over 300 people. They then poured thousands of pounds of concrete over it, which had to be kept damp for months in order to set without cracking, and topped it off with fourteen feet of soil.
Beach proudly states that this homemade bunker can withstand anything short of a direct nuclear strike; though if movies have taught us anything, it’s that no one bombs Canada and it’s too cold to sustain zombies. But some of his work is just awe-inspiring in a can’t look away kind of way. For example, after passing through those Dharma-esque doors, inhabitants travel down the conveyor corridor…
…and can visit the men’s washroom…
…the slightly understaffed fire station…
…and the scariest dentist chair I’ve ever seen outside of a horror film.
But that’s only the tip of the iceberg. Seriously. Click here to see a detailed plan of the bunker’s interior. Or click here to see an interview he gave to Penn and Teller. (Yes THAT Penn and Teller) Really, there is just too much O_O for me to cover in one post.
All my information and images courtesy of Beach’s Ark II website, which also details his plan for after we emerge from the buses into our very own Fallout universe.
As always, if YOU have an idea for a future Historical Thursday, please email it to me at thereifixedit@gmail.com.
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That. Is. AWESOME!!!
i can only imagine the “bioshock” like situation that would go on in there.
“inevitable doomsday glinting at us from 2012″
I hope you don’t believe that garbage. If you do go ahead and get that aluminum foil hat of yours ready. It was just a movie.
Hello, welcome to the Internet. Let me introduce you to my good friend sarcasm.
I can already smell the burning bits of brain…..anyone want some dip when they’re ready?
Oh, I couldn’t. Brains and dip go straight to my thighs.
Yes they do! Thanks to a diet of mostly brain dip and tortilla chips, my legs now have an IQ of 89, but they mostly just think about “french onion” for some reason…
Funny to find this here, Bruce also has Team Leaders for most of the 50 States in the US and a few countries. I’m the Team Leader for Virginia.
How many school buses is your shelter made of?
School buses > Nuclear Bombs
Also…you can’t have ANYTHING on the surface…if you’re serious.
Mine? None I plan on using cargo containers.
Wasn’t this shut down a while back due to fire code violations?
“…it all started in 1980 when Beach, a radiological scientific officer, decided that his line of work was going to kill us all.”
So all it takes to avoid nuclear holocaust is to convince Mr. Beach to cease working?
Please tell me this comes with a confusing orientation film and unisex jumpsuits.
Don’t worry! You’ll never be alone, because the Overseer has access to the omnipresent camera systems! Watch out for the possibility of social/medical experiments being performed on you every step of the way, though.
I remember hearing about this once, on either 60 Minutes or 20/20…
Or it could have been The Fifth Estate, or one of our other shows…
It was as creepy as it was funny, even back then…
I swear, it’s like me and this guy had the same childhood nightmare, only he had the funding to build a real bunker, and I just built one for my lego men.
Pieces of Plastic deserve a change to live too, ya know…….
Its like that bunker from Fallout3. Dibbs on the first wrist computer.
http://www.walyou.com/blog/2010/03/31/military-gadgets/
There are, even various models
You wouldn’t even need an expensive one to make a Pipboy-3000. Just some heartbeat sensors to measure your body activity, geigerteller for radioactivity and a list function to list the types of clothes/foods you’re carrying. And perhaps a barcode reader which can read the barcodes of all your items instead of typing them in.
Proud to be Canadian…
Looks like a set from under the Venture Compound.
I love it, look at the map.
Two things:
There are Young boys and girl’s, teen boys and girl’s and adult women’s bunkrooms, but apparently there are no adult males allowed to sleep over.
They are BIG fans of MTV, they’ve set up a post-holocaust set for Silent Library.
The adult mens room is right next to the adult day room
and conspicuously, sandwiched between the girls’ and boys’ bunk rooms.
I like that the silent library is right next to the crying room and the dentist chair.
You noticed that too, huh? I also like how the engineer gave himself private quarters.
nowalmart… that’s no dentist chair, it’s a birthing chair. Gotta repopulate after the blast
Awesome. Yes, we will have to repopulate.
Not only that, but all the reading I’ve done suggests that they’re gonna need supplies for a LOT longer than they’re planning. I’ve read estimates suggesting it might not be safe to walk around unprotected for over two years.
You don’t need stored supplies, you need a farm. Well, and stored supplies, but really you need a self-renewing food source.
The plans show a “childrens bunk room” – I’m sure they’ll do once the rice runs out.
Indeed. I was surprised by the 5000 gallon water tank – for 300 people. Even if survival rationing were used, thats only enough water to last 300 people 2 weeks at most. After that, you better find a source of clean, uncontaminated water or your shelter isn’t going to do you any good.
Concrete then a layer of anything soft like sand or ash and then the real heavy layer of concrete.
Better be waterproof concrete or the radiation will get in.
Ironic isn’t it that just as he finished it the Government started selling real ones.
Aren’t you more interested in the fact that the Phoenicians built an underground city that could house 25,000 people in the Grand Canyon and not even the Park Rangers are allowed to go near it.
The Smithsonian deny it but there are old local newspaper files that talk about it and about the huge beaten copper paged books that were removed and never heard of again.
You are not meant to know. American Indians are an off shoot of the incredible Kingdom of Juba. Don’t take my word for it GOOGLE it.
- @ Gelvan Tullibole -
It was only “thousands of pounds” of concrete. So probably not more than say 7,500 pounds.
Given the scale of this, it’s probably thousands of tons…not thousands of pounds.
Is it just a coincidence that your name is an anagram of “Gullible ant love”?
Did you know the word “gullible” isn’t in the dictionary?
My understanding is that this was intended as a fallout shelter, as opposed to a shelter from direct blast or earthquake damage. I haven’t gone through his web site in detail, though, so it’s possible I’m mistaken.
Indeed, especially when the description said that it could survive anything *short* of a direct impact.
Thus, your post was redundant.
Thanks anyway though.
I would google it Gelvan, but the reptoids seem to have jammed my signal. I think they know.
I’ve always thought it would be a good idea to have some of these type things lying around just in case something goes wrong. Not just useful for nuclear strikes, but a few other disasters too.
They tried this in the US. It was called the Civil Defense program. Several million tons of crackers were made up and whisked off to the basements of high schools nationwide back in the early 1960s, where, due to a shortage of nuclear war, many still sit.
Imagine setting all those crackers off simultaneously – then you really would need a blast shelter.
Well I don’t necessarily mean something like that, just having some underground bunkers designed for a bunch of people to live in. Sticking crackers in basements is more of something you would do if there was a good chance something would happen in the next few weeks.
They threw those survival crackers out of civil defense storage at my college in the late 1970s. They were still in their airtight canisters (great wastepaper cans) but the oil in them (food oil – cooking oil) had turned to wax. I think they were still technically edible; we all tried one… bite, and spat it out and so forth.
Still pretty cool. I’ve always wished I could get my hands on some of those crackers just to see what the 1960s tasted like.
Mmmm… turbulent…
Please, next time, warn us about the color scheme? Vivid lemon yellow background and blood red text. Ouch, my eyes are burning.
Gotta love how they have (or are planning to have) a survival trailer park on some acreage in Texas.
That is so cool, especially if you are crazy about the coldwar
Just to be pedantic…. if the concrete had “to be kept damp for months in order to set without cracking”, then you’ve done something seriously wrong mixing the concrete!
re: kept damp for months. That depends on how long it takes you to bring in the concrete.
They had to keep it damp for months because of the heat, not supply. When concrete sets, it produces heat, so if the concrete is very thick, it will set unevenly (outside edges first) and will crack just from setting. So the solution is either to run cold water through pipes through the concrete to make it set evenly, which they did in the Hoover Dam, or they have to make it set very, very slowly.
The bucket of sand shows just how well-equipped it is: that bucket is for fire use ONLY. There are OTHER buckets of sand set aside for emergency kitty litter and for covering vomit.
If that’s survival I’ll take my chances outside.
I love the website, it’s filled with all the old Y2K conspiracies etc.
Great bit of work but it’s not been updated in almost a decade.
He’s working on an updated website.
This is ridiculous. I would rather die in the blast than spend 2 months (let alone 2 yrs) in this thing. It’s obvious this was designed by a fanatic, not an engineer. That’s another way of saying it won’t work.
Another thought – would it kill them to add some plaster and paint, instead of having bare concrete everywhere? Seriously, if people are gonna be penned up in there, you need to think about psychological health too. A decent paint job, some nice floor tiling, it’d make the world of difference.
Damn I just said the almost exact same thing. Sorry, I didn’t read your post.
What idot woud put the children’s play room next to the confrence room and just past that the command room? If your trying to run a shelter after a doomsday situation, the last thing you need is a bunch of kids screaming and yelling next door. Only thing kids would be good for is throwing them to the zombies while you ran away.
I loved how the playroom was right next to the decontamination room.
If you want to see a creepier version of that, check out the stockport air raid shelters in britain, pretty much the same, but these were used in britain during the war.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/phill_dvsn/sets/72157614966323211/
So where does Bruce park Landmaster 1?
Give him a break, he’s just a Canadian, eh?
Is there a place in there to lock people up?
Yes.
The map shows a sensory deprivation tank to remove cabin fever. It also shows a cry room for children.
To me, the whole damn thing looks like a hell hole prison. The idea of voluntarily living underground…
I’m claustrophobic, and being underground is just so many times worse than a tiny room above ground could ever hope to be.
Would it really have killed them to put down a bit of carpet? Or a few throw rugs? A lick of paint? Would it completely void it’s nuclear protection to hang up a few pictures?
I think the same thing watching Alien and Bladerunner.
what? no interweb access?
Even City 17 was less run down and depressing than this place. I don’t think it’s just children who would need the cry room… Dr. Jonas Venture’s fallout shelter though, THAT was a groovy place to spend the apocalypse!
does everyone here HAVE to be an ass??? This may not work, but at least this guy is trying. Lets see ANY of you do better. Some prep is better than nothing.
LOL I must agree with you. It’s better than nothing in a pinch. I’ll take the buried school bus kludge over death by zombie.
For a little chuckle, hover your cursor over each of the pictures and wait for the alt text to pop up.
This one is pretty good, I always wanted to have a bunker like that! I even built mine in my mother’s basement inspired by that thing!
Am I the only one thinking I would *so* much rather die above ground from radiation poisoning with forty eyes, a third nipple and gills than to have to ever go down there, even for a day, let alone having to actually live down there long term? The shelter is just so much more the stuff of my nightmares than any kind of radiation or end of the world scenario ever could be. I would rather face zombies. That all look like Paris Hilton and talk like Brittany Spears.
But are they wearing clown makeup? O.O
did anyone else notice on the floorplan, the one singular awkward fail? Adult men’s rooms – right next to young girls rooms.
FAIL.
So, he’s going to suck air in through big air intakes? Nice radioactive dust-filled air.
I notice you’re all noticing the men’s room is next to the girls’ room. Someone would notice. What I noticed was that there’s rooms for just about everything but no… nookie room.
He’s planned for room for lots of children, but presumably just the ones you bring with you. Not allowed to make any more.
Unless it’s the “Privacy Room”. Which is in the nursery. Or perhaps you’d have a rota for using the bedroom in the conference area. Either way, that’s probably their main form of recreation severely curtailed.
heh. i thought that about the air intakes as well.
i think the main point there (with the room placement) was to separate the teens (guys and girls) due to the hormones, and keep the young girls near the older girls, who would serve as role models.
Besides, there is the Adult women’s bunk room there,, across from the young girl’s room, to help prevent…well, you know. Don’t worry about it anyway. There’s a CURTAIN there (like that’ll do anything but cut off vision)
I love how the teenage girls rooms are next to the entrance though. Pick one up on the way in, leave her by the door on the way out (BTW, im still a teen, so…)
I did find one thing confusing. Why is there a young girls (AKA, prepubescent) room, young boys (AKA, pre-pubescent) room, and then a children’s room…i guess the children’s room is really for the toddlers, infants, and the like?
IN addition to the library having the small children’s room and the crying room next to it, there is also the generator, which in my experience is louder than most children (especailly if it’s THAT large)
oh, and I want one of these. perhaps using two buses as 1 room, for double width, and some breathing room. Oh, that and less dingy looking floors and walls. They look absolutely disgusting. I’d throw in a maid’s chambers for the hell of it.
School bus shelter. Being 6’4″, that VERY first thing I though of, and not one other commenter touched on, is that unless you are less than about 5’5″ tall, you aren’t ever going to get to stand completely upright in this place. FAIL