It's just past midnight when a crazed agent of doom steps onto your lawn, pulls out his assault rifle and opens fire in the direction of your master bedroom. Here are six we'd like to hole up in until the fallout settles. Today, they're bigger, stronger and setting one off is guaranteed to leave a crater in your checking account. Today's fallout-shelter offerings show that the industry standard is a far cry from the cheap-and-quick backyard bunker. The subsequent decade saw more of the same in PM's pages, with stories such as 'Backyard Bomb Shelter,' 'Atomic Hideouts,' and 'You Can Build a Low-Cost Shelter Quickly.'Īccording to industry experts, bomb-shelter tech has changed little in the five decades since World War II. A 1951 article from Popular Mechanics titled, 'If the A-bombs Burst,' detailed crucial steps for surviving the opening salvo of World War III, complete with a list of how to stock a shelter. People are becoming more savvy to those.'Īmerican preparedness and paranoia in the form of the bomb shelter dates back to the earliest days of the Cold War. As one of those businesses that thrive on bad news-and the newspapers are full of real threats right now. We're having considerably more activity in the last six months. 'We get do a lot in Texas, and a lot in New York too,' says Sharon Packer, of Utah Shelter Systems, 'because they've already had an event. All through Appalachia, it's people who share a similar mind-set.' Right now we're doing a lot in Tennessee, Kentucky, Pennsylvania. 'Twenty-twelve, the financial collapse: I just had to hire a new architect Tuesday. Camden, an engineer at high-end shelter builder Hardened Structures, says. 'For whatever reason-and we're not totally sure ourselves-but business is incredible,' Brian V. They attribute the growth in business to Kim Jong-un's erratic missile lobbing, the intransigent Iranian clerics hell-bent on getting nuclear weaponry and the impending total collapse of the global financial system

At least that's the consensus of the men and women who design, construct and install underground sanctuaries.

Fallout shelter a cry for help