SHELTER SAVVY

PART 1: The Pitfalls of Expedient Planning

by Hal Walter

[Introduction by Miles Stair. Hal Walter is the dean of American survivalists. While others were talking preparations, Hal was making preparations a half-century ago! He is still active in his shelter work and design, still innovating and incorporating the latest EMP shielding for his generators and other electrical items, for example. Hal just turn 87, and he may well outlive the rest of the population on the North American continent because of his life-long pursuit of the proper shelter, supplies and protection. I was a practical, practicing, prepared survivalist in the early ‘70's, and Hal Walter predates me by almost twenty years!]

Of grave concern to me after over 50 years of preparing to survive nuclear attack is the glaring gap between theory and practice as they pertain to shelter construction. One of the most potentially lethal concepts is that of expedient shelters. Even though sincere and dedicated authors theorize that a Soviet-initiated nuclear war would last at least six months and devastate the United States and that post-war recovery would take from two to five years, most nonetheless focus on an expedient approach to shelter planning. I believe such an approach is not only inappropriate, but unintentional encourages the survivalist to ignore the hard facts about the money, time and planning it takes to provide an adequate shelter.

My concern is with the practical needs of a family, most of whom are untrained or unprepared for the rigors of life after nuclear war. Would a "hidey-hole" in the ground offer them a fair chance of survival? I think every survivalist should consider this question carefully.

You may ask, "Isn’t some shelter plan, no matter how inadequate, better than none at all?" My answer, from long experience, is a resounding NO! Perhaps some insight will be gained by reviewing the gradual evolution of my own shelter, which encompasses the design and construction of four separate shelters in different areas of the country.

When I first contacted my local Office of Civil Defense in 1955, their literature was based on the premise of a one- or two-day nuclear exchange, a 14 ay period of shelter living, and then well, that’s where it stopped! Sad to say, the official approach still reflects this unrealism (witness the sorry mess call the Crisis Relocation Plan), as do many of the current books and magazine articles - right down to the same old drawing of sandbagged metal culverts, the lean-to against the wall and the books piled on table-tops.

Being inexperienced at the time, I started drawing up my shelter plans. I adopted some of these erroneous concepts and, as a result, went through a prolong ed, period of trial and error. My first shelter was constructed in a new home I built in 1957 in a medium-size mid-western city - a half-hearted attempt to combine a basement kitchen with a shelter. Neither emotionally nor psychologically prepared for a comprehensive approach, I was hesitant to design anything solely for shelter use - so I ended up with an inadequate comprise. For example, the room was only about eight feet wide by 12 feet long. A small, cave-like hall with extra shielding was tacked onto one end. But after I read The Effects of Nuclear Weapons (U.S. Dept. Of Defense and Dept. Of Energy. Superintendent of Documents, US Govt. Printing Office, Wash, DC 20402), I found the shielding was not enough protection against radiation. My ceiling, the upstairs kitchen floor, had only a four inch thickness of concrete. No baffling was provided for the entrance. A hose feeding from an upstairs water heater supplied only about 100 gallons of water for eight people. The Protection Factor (PF)* of this so-called shelter couldn’t have been more than 40. Most shortsighted of all, I had completely overlooked the possibility of our city being a target site, in which case my feeble efforts would have been useless. You can see the effects of procrastination, indecision and inexperience.

My next shelter, constructed the following year in a two-story second home, incorporated efforts to correct these obvious mistakes. The ground floor was dug back into the side of a hill that slanted steeply down to the lake shore. I had the contractor dig further into the hill to make room for a 12 ft square shelter with a concrete floor, poured and rodded concrete-block walls and a four-inch poured concrete ceiling. Adding three feet of sand and earth on top of the shelter brought it’s back entrance directly into the second-floor hallway of the cottage. To complete the passage as an entryway, and to provide additional radiation shielding, I covered the dirt with a concrete slab. Water was provided in one of the most effective ways possible: a well that fed up directly into the shelter. In addition to an electric pump, I installed a hand pump in case of power failure.

In many respects, this shelter was ideal. I would recommend it as an inexpensive, highly efficient design. Its PF was over 2000 - more than adequate for any area outside of a direct target. However, the design improvements were seriously compromised by my immature ideas of just what a survival plan should accomplish. I had only one or two small caliber weapons, no "Bug Out" kit for the 175 mile journey to the shelter from our home in case of sudden evacuation, no alternate power supply, nothing more than an open hearth for heat in case the gas furnace went off, and other inadequacies that would have made our long-term survival difficult if not impossible.

Both of these shelters were equipped with a hand-operated air pump, the Champion #60-C. In 1958 they cost $52.00 apiece: now they are advertised for almost ten times that amount - that’s what I call inflation! The same two blowers are used in our present shelter. You can make an excellent passage from the air intake to the blower with a flexible sewer hose sold for RV use. I rigged a small air filter, of the type sold in automotive stores, to one end of a ten foot hose in case we should need it for the entrance hallway. I also have a three inch hole saw (all of the fittings are three inches in diameter) for use in an electric drill if I need to cut an opening in a hurry. This is just one of the reasons a stand-by generator comes in handy!

As an alternative to an expensive hand-operated air pump, I suggest you look for a second-hand squirrel cage blower in your local heating- and air-conditioning supply store. These blowers come in many sizes, so you should be able to find one for your particular air volume needs. Add a simple handle to the shaft so the cage can be hand-turned. A local blacksmith can easily weld an extension onto the shaft in case it is too short to take the handle. Squirrel cage blowers are usually open on both sides, the side from which the shaft extends will have to be fitted with a tight cover. The other side could be covered with a piece of canvas as a makeshift filter over the three inch air-intake hose. Recently I adapted a squirrel cage blower, hooked up to my standard 115 v system, to furnish cold outside air into my new cold storage room.

Providing adequate air filtration will probably require much experimentation. My present shelter has a three-inch metal pipe, threaded on both ends, installed through the outside wall. The exterior end, which draws air from another basement room, has a standard auto air-filter unit welded onto it. In addition, I have a piece of oiled, lightweight form for insertion into the filter when necessary. This reduces air flow to some extent, but is effective in removing dust particles in case of chemical or biological attack. I plan to install filtering chemicals - activated charcoal and hydrated lime - in the air pipe. In addition, I have installed a small 12 v fan in a box and slipped it over the interior end of the pipe. This would provide constant airflow from a battery and obviate the need for someone to turn the hand pump at a time when other functions are more critical.

The Defense Civil Preparedness Agency (DCPA) Attack Environment Manual of June, 1973 recommends fresh air intake of three cubic feet per minute (cfm) per person in order to maintain oxygen content of 21% and keep carbon dioxide content down to 0.5%. The manual also recommends 65 cubic feet of air space per person - a change of air about every 22 minutes. Our present shelter contains roughly 1,600 net cubic feet. Planning a maximum of 10 occupants, that allows for 160 cubic feet of air space per person, more than double the recommendation. Also assuming 10 person occupancy, a pump capacity of only 30 cfm is required, yet ours is 100 cfm to provide more than an adequate margin of safety. (Of course, during cooking periods a higher air volume would be required.) It is easy to see that we could double our number of occupants if necessary.

I cannot emphasize strongly enough the importance of the total shelter concept versus an isolated pit buried in the back yard and ignored. The properly designed shelter, besides being an equipment and supplies repository, should be at the heart of all your survival activities.

PF - Protection Factor

Current government policy requires that shelters have a minimum Protection Factor (PF), according to Thomas Nieman in Better Read than Dead, "expresses the relationship between the amount of fallout gamma radiation that would be received by a person in an unprotected location and the amount that would be received inside a shelter at the same location." For example, an occupant of a shelter with a PF of 40 would be exposed to a gamma-radiation dose of only 1/40th (or 2.5%) of that to which he would be exposed otherwise.

The shielding capability of a particular material is generally expressed in terms of half-thickness, which designates how much of that material is required to reduce radiation intensity by one-half. The half-thickness of some common materials: steel, 0.7 inches; concrete, 2.2 inches; earth, 3.3 inches; wood, 8.8 inches.

Applying the formula for concrete, we find that 11 inches of concrete provides five one-half reductions: ½, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16, and 1/32. At this point PF is substandard. Adding another 11 inches of concrete - or five more reductions - however, provides premium shielding: 1/64, 1/128, 1/512 and 1/1.024. And the addition of another 2.2 inches - yielding 24.2 inches of concrete, creates a PF of about 2.048. This means that radiation as intense as 4,000 R/hr (Roentgens per hour) outside the shelter would result in only 2 R/hr inside.

Keep in mind that these values represent residual fallout radiation. Initial radiation produced directly form a nuclear explosion requires about twice the shielding density. Keep in mind also that a PF of 40 may fall well below adequacy in certain areas, for example, a hard-target area that would receive excessively high levels of gamma radiation.

Other articles by Hal Walter

• Shelter Savvy, Part 1,       

• Shelter Savvy, Part 2,   

• Shelter Savvy, Part 3,

• Shelter Savvy, Part 4,

• Shelter Savvy, Part 5,

• Preparedness Evaluation,   

• SURVIVAL DEFENSE SAVVY I         

• SURVIVAL DEFENSE SAVVY II       

• SURVIVAL DEFENSE SAVVY III