Last week I posted a picture on Twitter of my husband pushing our monthly Costco cart full of crap. “We’re not prepping *necessarily*” I wrote alongside it. Because of course we’re not prepping. That’s how much food and sundries we go through in a regular four week period; our house isn’t big enough to stock up for months of emergency survival.
Then today I see this headline: “California City Welcomes Doomsday Bunkers.” Of course I click on it. Because I don’t currently have a doomsday bunker (they were out of them at Costco so we got an acoustic guitar instead) and I want to see what the hype is all about.
Seems the underground emergency shelters popular during the Cold War are making a comeback (bunkers are the new black, you guys!), but let’s get one thing straight: These aren’t your mother’s fallout shelters.
SoCal based Atlas Survival Shelters builds survival shelters half the size of a basketball court that feature a “master bedroom, dining nook and a couch to watch a 47” flat screen TV” (sold separately and good luck getting the cable guy to come out and hook that shit up when you need him).
Apparently the bunker-builders could barely handle the influx of orders as the end of the world was approaching last year. (Remember that? That was awesome.) But even after the Mayan Doomsday came and went without an apocalyptic ending to it all, people still call. Anytime there’s a meteor shower, natural disaster or warlike attack anywhere in the world, the cash register chimes over at Atlas. (To the hefty tune of $65,000 I might add.)
Here’s why I won’t be placing my order anytime soon:
1. I don’t have $65,000 lying around. And if I did, I’d fix one of the 2,395 things that need fixing on my above ground house, and maybe take the kids to Hawaii. You know, before it sinks.
2. If you build it, they will come. Can you imagine? Bombs are dropping all around you and buildings are melting so you hustle your kids and your pets into your handy backyard bunker. You can hear the screams of your neighbors and friends, but you can’t risk opening the door or anything. They’d all want in and then they’d suck up all of the air and eat all of your freeze dried turkey jerky and you’d be lucky to live three days. Screw that. They should have built their own goddamned bunkers. (Try not to look so smug.)
3. It’s a bunker. I don’t care if it’s half the size of Rhode Island, you’re locked in there with your whiny kids (“We’re hot! We’re cold! There’s nothing on TV! She’s drinking the last packet of Tang and I CALLED IT FIRST!” OMFG) and your gassy husband and no air circulation whatsoever; how long do you think you’re going to last before you throw that door open and run screaming into the radioactive street? Not long enough, I’m guessing.
4. Um, does anybody think about afterwards? Congratulations! You and your family and the world’s population of cockroaches are the lone Armageddon survivors. You sure dodged that bullet, you clever SOB. “Come on kids, we’re going to Disneyland! We won’t have to wait in a SINGLE line!” (I hope you know how to run amusement park rides, because oh yeah, all of the operators are dead.)
5. I wouldn’t make it even if I made it. Because one quick glance at any prepper’s “must have” list tells me that I am not equipped for this shit. (In the top 100 are guns, ammo, pepper spray, clubs, bats, propane cylinders, manual grain grinders, a carbon monoxide alarm, roach bait, goats, chickens and tuna fish, for fuck’s sake. I cannot eat tuna fish, you guys. I just can’t.)
I hope this won’t deter you from building or buying your own bunker. I’ll bring the wine.
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