How to Hide a Fallout Shelter in the Middle of Suburbia

This is part two of my expose' on the growing, underground problem of bunker dependency in suburban America. See the previous shocking confession, "Welcome to My Underground Bunker." If you haven't read that first installment in this series, I'd suggest you do so, because this posting dovetails with the nail-biting issues at the end of that article. And then, Part 3, Is There Good Reason to Hide Your Shelter? and Part 4: Down into the Bunker We Go

So, the big, often unspoken concern for would-be shelter buyers is, "Could I actually get away with it?"

Of course, for a number of reasons, many of the most self-respecting, privacy-conscious shelter shoppers want to be assured that if they're going to bury an anti-apocolyptic chamber of steel in their backyard, their reputations as harmless, faceless suburbanites will remain unblemished.

Fret no more, kind people ... most certainly we can guarantee ... well, OK, probably we can hide ... or, actually, there is at least a chance we can protect the names of the innocent and ... ahh ... no we can't be of that much help in that regard. But you know, it's really never as bad as you think it's going to be.

I do wish I could tell you that we sell optional bullet-proof character membranes with integrated installation-invisibility coverage, but we specifically decided to keep our shelters reasonably priced and within reach of mortal man. So I'm afraid we also nixed the supernatural neighborhood-wide mind-distortion fields that would have cost us a few billion dollars in extra development costs, and which we probably would have had to pass on to you in extra overhead charges.

That Thing

Most kidding aside, to be clear, you're pretty much on your own in confronting the fact that putting a multi-ton steel monolith into the ground with a crane is going to attract a little attention--certainly of the neighbors, maybe of passers-by and/or local zoning authorities, and at the very least, your spouse.

So, although most shelter installations are done within one day (YES, ONE DAY!), you're going to want to be upfront with at least a few of those parties. And also come up with a fantastically believable whopper for all the rest ... if you are so inclined.

You could call your project a special water-line repair job, electrical line work, or you could be putting in a wine cellar. Or maybe you volunteered to guinea-pig a new experimental federal infrastructure module for submariner communications. Or here's an idea ... it could be a storm shelter ... ooohhh, that's so crazy, it just might work.

In the end, you'll likely find the whole experience to be remarkably painless. Most folks involved with or witnessing some aspect of your installation won't really care or maybe understand what you're up to.

Suburban Camo

One of the fun things, I think, about installing the shelter in your backyard (if indeed that is where you put it) is that it's your challenge to come up with ways to disguise the telltale signs that something is underground.

I mean, once it's buried, in America, you can pretend and almost start to yourself believe that it never happened. But first, you have to cover your tracks.

After all, does anybody (other than me, I guess) intend to turn their bunker into a tourist attraction? Come to think of it, even I decided to try to hide all the sordid details of my buried past.

So here with this post are the first three pictures of my backyard "shame," turned oddly enough, into pride. Can YOU find the clues to the nature of what lies buried in this backyard?



More in the next installment, to include confirmation of the clues that are present here, if you can pinpoint them. For other posts in this series, see the mainpage.