A fallout shelter is an enclosed space specially designated to protect occupants from radioactive debris or fallout resulting from a nuclear explosion. Many such shelters were constructed as civil defense measures during the Cold War.
The Doomsday Clock is a symbol that represents the likelihood of a human-made global catastrophe, in the opinion of the members of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Maintained since 1947, the Clock is a metaphor, not a prediction, for threats to humanity from unchecked scientific and technological advances. That is, the time on the Clock is not to be interpreted as actual time. A hypothetical global catastrophe is represented by midnight on the Clock, with the Bulletin's opinion on how close the world is to one represented by a certain number of minutes or seconds to midnight, which is then assessed in January of each year. The main factors influencing the Clock are nuclear warfare, climate change, and artificial intelligence. The Bulletin's Science and Security Board monitors new developments in the life sciences and technology that could inflict irrevocable harm to humanity.
Survivalism is a social movement of individuals or groups who proactively prepare for emergencies, such as natural disasters, and other disasters causing disruption to social order caused by political or economic crises. Preparations may anticipate short-term scenarios or long-term, on scales ranging from personal adversity, to local disruption of services, to international or global catastrophe. There is no bright line dividing general emergency preparedness from prepping in the form of survivalism, but a qualitative distinction is often recognized whereby preppers/survivalists prepare especially extensively because they have higher estimations of the risk of catastrophes happening. Nonetheless, prepping can be as limited as preparing for a personal emergency, or it can be as extensive as a personal identity or collective identity with a devoted lifestyle.
The Mount Weather Emergency Operations Center is a government command facility located near Frogtown, Clarke County, Virginia, used as the center of operations for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Also known as the High Point Special Facility (HPSF), its preferred designation since 1991 is "SF".
Air raid shelters are structures for the protection of non-combatants as well as combatants against enemy attacks from the air. They are similar to bunkers in many regards, although they are not designed to defend against ground attack.
Emergency Government Headquarters is the name given for a system of nuclear fallout shelters built by the Government of Canada in the 1950s and 1960s as part of continuity of government planning at the height of the Cold War. Situated at strategic locations across the country, the largest of these shelters are popularly referred to as "Diefenbunkers", a nickname coined by federal opposition politicians during the early 1960s. The nickname was derived from the last name of the Prime Minister of the day, John Diefenbaker, who authorized their construction. Over fifty facilities were built along several designs for various classes of service.
Continuity of government (COG) is the principle of establishing defined procedures that allow a government to continue its essential operations in case of a catastrophic event such as nuclear war.
A storm shelter or storm cellar is a type of underground bunker designed to protect the occupants from violent severe weather, particularly tornadoes. They are most frequently seen in the Midwest and Southeastern United States where tornadoes are generally frequent and the low water table permits underground structures.
The Diefenbunker, formerly known by its military designation, Canadian Forces Station Carp (CFS Carp), is a large underground four-storey reinforced concrete bunker and nuclear fallout shelter located in the rural area of Carp, Ontario approximately 30 km (19 mi) west of downtown Ottawa. Between 1957 and 1961, during the Cold War the Government of Canada led by then Prime Minister John Diefenbaker authorized the Diefenbunker to be designed and built as the Central Emergency Government Headquarters (CEGHQ Carp) in an attempt to ensure the continuity of government subsequent to a nuclear weapons attack by the Soviet Union. In 1994, CFS Carp was decommissioned and closed.
Human extinction is the hypothetical end of the human species, either by population decline due to extraneous natural causes, such as an asteroid impact or large-scale volcanism, or via anthropogenic destruction (self-extinction), for example by sub-replacement fertility.
The Ark Two Shelter is a nuclear fallout shelter built by Bruce Beach in the village of Horning's Mills. The shelter first became habitable in 1980 and has been continuously expanded and improved since then. The 930 m2 (10,000 sq ft) shelter is composed of 42 school buses, which were buried underground as patterns for concrete that was then poured over to provide the main structure, onto which up to 5 meters of earth were piled to provide fallout protection.
The Black Hills Ordnance Depot (BHOD) was a munitions storage and maintenance facility formerly operated by the United States Army Ordnance Corps. The depot was located in Fall River County, in far southwestern South Dakota about eight miles south of the town of Edgemont.
The Atchison Storage Facility, commonly known as the Atchison Caves, is a 2.7 million square foot underground storage facility in a former pillar limestone mine 50 to 150 feet below the ground in the Missouri River bluffs at Atchison, Kansas. The bunker complex was a secure U.S. government storage facility from World War II until 2013.
A global catastrophic risk or a doomsday scenario is a hypothetical event that could damage human well-being on a global scale, even endangering or destroying modern civilization. An event that could cause human extinction or permanently and drastically curtail humanity's existence or potential is known as an "existential risk".
Kelly Butte Natural Area is a city park of about 23 acres (9.3 ha) in southeast Portland in the U.S. state of Oregon, just east of Interstate 205. The park is named after pioneer Clinton Kelly, who settled the area east of the Willamette River in 1848. It is part of the Boring Lava Field, an extinct Plio-Pleistocene volcanic field that contains 32 cinder cones and shield volcanoes in or near Portland.
An underground hospital is a hospital that is constructed underground to protect patients and staff from attack during war. They were often used during World War II but very few now remain operational.
The Marengo warehouse and distribution center is a subterranean storage facility located in Marengo, Indiana, located about 35 miles northwest of Louisville, Kentucky. It is one of the largest underground storage facilities in the United States.
The Deep Underground Command Center (DUCC), sometimes also called the Deep Underground Command and Control Site (DUCCS), was a United States military installation that was proposed on January 31, 1962, to be "a very deep underground center close to the Pentagon, perhaps 3,000–4,000 feet down, protected to withstand direct hits by high-yield weapons and endure about 30 days in a post-attack period." The DUCC would have been built as "an austere 50-man … or an expanded 300-man version ". It was designed to withstand multiple direct hits of 200 to 300 megaton weapons bursting at the surface or 100 MT weapons penetrating to depths of 70–100 feet. Based on Strategic Air Command's Deep Underground Support Center (DUSC) planned near the Cheyenne Mountain Complex nuclear bunker, the DUCC plan was recommended to President John F. Kennedy for fiscal year 1965 funding shortly before his assassination, but the underground DUCC, SAC's DUSC, and NORAD's Super Combat Centers were never built.
The Armijska Ratna Komanda D-0, also known as the Ark, ARK/D-0, Atomska Ratna Komanda, and nicknamed Tito's bunker, is a Cold War-era nuclear bunker and military command centre located near the town of Konjic in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Built to protect Yugoslav President Josip Broz Tito and up to 350 members of his inner circle in the event of an atomic conflict, the structure is made up of residential areas, conference rooms, offices, strategic planning rooms, and other areas. The bunker remained a state secret until after the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s.
The Survival Condo or Luxury Survival Condo Project is a company and real estate property in Kansas, which has converted an Atlas ICBM missile silo into a 15-story underground bunker.
