This probably isn’t a very effective survival system for a nuclear attack.
If you bury a shipping container, and get in it during a nuclear attack, it’ll save anyone having to bury you?
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This probably isn’t a very effective survival system for a nuclear attack.
If you bury a shipping container, and get in it during a nuclear attack, it’ll save anyone having to bury you?
If I had the land and resources I would do this – but not under any illusion it’s a safety measure, rather SOLELY because having an underground bunker would be fun. Handy storage and can you imagine the potential for “Fallout” themed parties?
What happens when you bury a shipping container
Rust? Maybe flooding? Those doors do not look watertight.
Shipping containers can be great storage devices. The local rowing and dragon boat clubs have two for boats and they seem great. We used one 10-footer for storing campaign signs in the last federal election. Instant “shed” in the back yard and easily secured.
I have even seen pictures of apartment complexes built out of shipping containers but I don’t think you are supposed to bury them.
@ 3 abbeycadabra
I doubt that you could put much more than 25–30 cm of earth over one. I don’t think that they would have the structural integrity. When you see them stacked, it is because they have beams or pillars in the corners to support the weight. I don’t think the overall roof is built to handle a load.
And 25–30 cm of dirt generally would mean a dead patch instead of grass or other plants over top of the container.
abbeycadabra@#1:
If I had the land and resources I would do this – but not under any illusion it’s a safety measure, rather SOLELY because having an underground bunker would be fun. Handy storage and can you imagine the potential for “Fallout” themed parties?
Oh, yeah. I totally agree.
I actually have a 1920s coal mine on my property; when they shut it down in 1940 they blew up the tunnel opening (“the high wall”) but there still have to be tunnels down there. So I could literally have a “mineshaft gap” if I wanted to. Except that it’d be more dangerous down in the mine than up at the surface.
jrkrideau@#2:
I have even seen pictures of apartment complexes built out of shipping containers but I don’t think you are supposed to bury them.
Yeah, they’re super cool for the “small house” set.
For the effort it would take to bury a container, I think a ferroconcrete box with a tube-accessway would probably be about the same amount of work. The hard part is moving the dirt off and back. Out in coal-mining country that’s not a huge thing – it’d be a couple weeks with a couple Cat D-9s, so maybe $1/2 mil for a really fine fuhrerbunker.
Now I’m confused. Aren’t all houses already built with cellars? Why are American survivalists even concerned about underground spaces, when every single house already has one? At least that’s how houses are built where I live. Here people use these underground spaces for storing food (mostly home-made canned foods and vegetables), storing firewood, etc. similar purposes. In case of newer houses that were built recently, basements are also utilized as an underground parking space for cars. Here nobody perceives such underground spaces as particularly useful for surviving disasters. I’m aware that during WWII people used cellars as air raid shelters, but they weren’t really that good. When burning buildings above the shelter collapsed, people became trapped inside.
@6 – It’s a regional thing in America. Basement or no basement is primarily driven by the depth the ground freezes in winter. Basements are dug below the frost line to avoid freeze/ thaw heaving that would crack the foundation. Areas that rarely freeze are less likely to have cellars or basements. It’s pretty rare in the south west.
Then there are also tornadoes. Basements are useful for tornado shelters.
Underground survival shelters are the sort of thing that appeal to the same demographic that love tactical gear. Rich people have them as a status thing. Less rich people want to do it on the cheap with storage containers. *shrugs*
@#7
I see. I have never lived in any warm regions, so I wasn’t aware of this. I understand the tornado shelter aspect, but, other than that, tactical gear lovers really haven’t thought this through–in case of a man-made disaster having access to an underground shelter isn’t even that useful. Just look at what happened in Dresden during WWII. The fact that every house had a cellar didn’t really help much.
# 6 Ieva Skrebele
Aren’t all houses already built with cellars?
No, as Curious Digressions @ 8 says it is a regional/climate thing.
I live in Canada and most Canadian houses are built with a cellar (or basement which is the same thing but sounds fancier).
Even in Canada some houses are built as what is technically called “slab on grade” which roughly speaking means you dig a fairly deep hole, put a lot of gravel in the hole and pour a concrete floor. No cellar but with luck you are below the frost line.
I think the main point about cellers in Canada, the Baltic States and similar areas is the frost line. Plus a need for reasonably warm dry storage for foods and firewood in the winter.
A co-worker and I were once showing some Australians from their building codes establishment over a housing development in Ottawa and we were stumped for an answer to the question, “Why do you have basements?” Apparently they are unknown in Australia. We mumbled and and basically came up with Curious Digressions’ explanation.
Of course, they were curious as to why the model house had a closet just as you came in the front entrance. We had to explain winter coats and boots.
Shipping containers are great for keeping small children out of your stuff, at least until they get their first angle grinders.
On another forum I infest, someone showed how in New Guinea they replaced washed out bridges very quickly by placing shipping containers with the tops cut out and filled with rocks as abutments. Some decking over the gap and it’ll last at least until the next monsoon. The ones pictured were already bulging suggestively as their sides struggled to cope with distributed load.
Regarding cellars, I’ve also heard that it depends on the age of the building. Before WW2 cellars were routinely included, but during the war they cut down on them to save materials, and then after the war they kept on not building them — they used “crawl spaces” instead. Sigh.
brucegee1962:
“Crawl spaces” – where woodchucks go to die.
In some places a basement is an invitation for flooding. My house has a nice basement of hand-cut limestone – great walls. It had a dirt floor until I got cement hauled in. It is home to Basement Snake and who knows what else.
Living in Southern California, older houses generally have a crawl space; newer ones seem to mostly be built on slabs. I had no idea that’s why basements existed, but it makes sense. A neighbor dug out part of their crawl space in the 1960s as a shelter, and we referred to it as a basement, but it had no interior access from the house.
I’m not sure it’s appropriate to keep your kids in a shipping container.
The lined ones with windows fitted ain’t too bad.