If you were alive in the 1960s, you undoubtedly recall air raid drills and the hoopla about underground shelters. In the movie The Road, which takes place in post-apocalyptic times, father and son find such an underground shelter, full stocked with food and supplies. The image above is an artist’s rendition of a lounge area in a proposed underground shelter by a company called Vivos.
I ran across this image and story the same day we posted Mass Dreams of the Future, a synchronicity that felt troubling because there’s apparently enough hype about 2012 so that developers are now capitalizing on it.
In a nushell, the Vivos shelter network is proposing a network of 20 such shelters. According to the article in USA Today, these shelters “are intended to protect those inside for up to a year from catastrophes such as a nuclear attack, killer asteroids or tsunamis.” Another outfit, Radius Engineering in Terrell, Texas, has been building these shelters for more than 30 years and claimed that business “has never been better.” Their shelters are pricey – from $400,000 to a $41 million shelter that can accommodate up to 750 people. For a Vivos shelter – which sells something like time shares for these things (not sure how that would work during a disaster!) – developer Robert Vicino is looking for buyers willing to pay $50,000 for adults and half that for children.
Vicino says he’s not profiting from fear. “We’re not creating the fear; the fear is already out there. We’re creating the solution.”
So what happens after a year or five years, when the supplies run out and people are losing their minds from living underground and the catastrophe that drove them into a shelter is still poisoning the air?
Yeah, I am not sure I am interested AT ALL in living in the post-apocalyptic world. I'll take my chances out here.
I couldn't help responding to this.
Arghh! I also was live in the sadly naive days of bomb shelters, and hiding our heads under our desks. LIke the wife in the "road" who simply walked into the woods to die, I would do the same; who would want to live in such a world?
What is needed is not a culture and vision, like "The Road" or the "The Book of Eli" or so many macho, fearful visions of a post apocalyptic world,….but visions of a new paradigm that imagines solutions and interconnection. Your very blog is a "living metaphor" for that.
When the movie "The Day After" aired on TV in the 1980s, my parents wouldn't let me see the part where people were hit with the blast and disappeared. They let my brother and I back into the room to watch the rest of it. Because of that, I always felt like if I had to endure a nuclear attack, I'd rather be victim to the initial blast than endure the radiation sickness.
If there was such a disaster which required living in these domed shelters, well…I keep thinking of the horror (as CJ pointed out) as what happened in New Orleans Superdome and the Convention Center. People were told to go there for shelter and it turned into a nightmare of crime, people going to the bathroom everywhere, no food. If that's a preview to the disasters that come, I'd rather be one of the "victims" and return to the spiritual realm.
wv: wercali (we r Cali…as in "fornia"?)
Claustrophobia here. I guess I will just take the bomb. 🙁
i lived during the days of "hiding" under the school desks and putting our arms over our faces etc –
but there are two other things i remember vividly from my childhood along those lines – my father, who was not an "organized religion" person at all said over and over that in the end, people should go to higher ground, ground as high as one could go – which as an adult made sense to me if one were fleeing floods and/or perhaps nuclear fallout – the other thing he said was that this country's greatest danger was "from within" – militants from other countries infiltrating into ours and destroying us within our own country – now, these things seem to have come to pass – and for my father who was neither "religious" nor actively "political" [that we knew of] these were odd things to say consistently over the years – however, there was/is much about our father's life that i don't know – experiences and connections to military bases and area 51, for example, that to this day make no sense – we were always told that he was a "purchasing agent" for the government – whatever that means – in any event, this post just struck a chord of my own father's remarks over the years –
wv= canooze – can ooze – guess cans can't be stored forever after all 🙂
I'm with you, Nancy. Right down the line.
I still like my idea of a community of like-minded people. But if there is a disaster of that kind of magnitude – I hope I'm the first to go!
T and R, I couldn't do that, either. I could survive contentedly in a deep cave or cavern, with very few other people. As a matter of fact, I've actually had "visions" of this. But, it could be memories from a past life. I "see" a cave up high in a rock mountain, and the cave can't be accessed from above, below, or either side, without a rope ladder or some such device. The cave has a huge inner room with several smaller rooms off the big one. It has natural springs in it that seem to come from its depths as opposed to topside (surface), and I'm with just a few other people. We are relatively comfortable, protected from the elements and invaders, but seem to be "hiding".
This would be an ideal situation for me, but no enormous "shelter" housing throngs of strangers. Couldn't survive that. WV:deledu delete you? deliver u? Or, d led u? In this instance, I would have to interpret it as Dad led you, because he does. cj
I think I'd go nuts living underground, in a bunker with a bunch of strangers.
hmmmm…..the developers aren't profiting from fear – right!
and as to the ending on-point question – the answer we've all seen in the movies…
wv= shlowsin – slow sin? low sin? 🙂
Agree with you, 67.
cj
I don't remember any air raid drills here in England in the 60s and haven't heard of anyone cashing in on 2012 over here, but there again haven't looked for such info.
I guess if people want to spend their money on such it's up to them. It may be worth it (for them) to ease their troubled minds. Personally I think we'll still all be around in 2013, 2014 …
I was alive in the 1950s and of course in the 1960s. In the mid to late 1950s, (I was in elementary school then), all our schools had "air raid" sirens on the roofs, and we had air raid "drills" as well as fire drills. The towns all had air raid sirens that were routinely tested and could be heard from one end of town to the other. Even though the newspapers gave the "scheduled" testing times so that the public would know it was a test and not the real thing, hearing those sirens was frightening. My Grandparents had a bomb shelter built underneath their home in Atlanta, and kept it well-stocked. Today we live in a time and in cultures where the possibilities of mass casualties from all kinds of events are increasingly possible, whether man-made or natural. My own opinion is that these enormous, high-cost shelters are a moot point and would ultimately bring uncontrollable chaos. I personally
feel that each person and/or family should take whatever precautions deemed advisable on an individual basis and go forward accordingly, just as we do during hurricane season. We prepare for the worst and hope for the best. Hundreds of thousands of folks are highly claustrophobic, and the mere thought of being "buried" in a bunker, however huge and luxurious, would eventually create panic attacks. Also, how to keep out the criminal elements who would continue anti-social and errant and criminal behavior? In a closed unit, again, however huge, this would be horrific, just as it was in the Dome in New Orleans after Katrina. For me, it's not a feasible idea. It's capitalizing and fear-mongering to make a buck, no matter what the "builders" say. WOW! Look at this very synchronistic WV: "ingrav" in grave? Whew. Not a nice thought. cj