Edited on 18 April 2024:
Comment: Research ancient underground cities, something which was a common thing thousands of years ago. An unfortunate regular occurrence caused large groups of human beings to live underground to the degree that they built cities.
Gas Products Comment: NO GAS PRODUCTS OF ANY KIND INSIDE OF YOUR UNDERGROUND LIVING SPACE OR UNDERGROUND ANIMAL LIVING SPACE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Years Answer: Being locked away underground for at least 5 years is a very formidable task both physically and mentally. It would not matter if you did everything perfectly and everything worked perfectly for at least five years. You would have to have the mentality of an astronaut or an experienced Navy SEAL and special forces types. To tell you the truth. I do not have the qualities of an astronaut, Navy SEAL or any other special forces type of extreme non ordinary person. As a matter of fact because of my ongoing health issues, I would not survive in a safe space or outside. Cold hard truth here and you have to recognize your own truths absent of any kind of prideful superman fantasy. I have seen stats on what happens to people who are in jail and then forced into isolated confinement for years and years. They usually come out psychologically worse than before.
Space Answer: Do you even have an understanding of just how much space you would need? Far more than you think. Bedroom for each person or each couple, water well room, salt storage, power distribution, batteries and storage, NBC air filtration for 5 years with ample square feet and can sustain all life forms, a natural gas tank farm out in the safe distance, regenerative fish farm and storage, regenerative vegetable food production and storage, quiet library with actual paper books, 2X entertainment area, quiet space, laundry area, kitchen, dining and food storage rooms, common area, exercise room, sun lamp room, bathing/showering/sauna room, communications/technology room, shop and tools room with ample storage.
Short Answer: $1-$15+ million.
Skill Sets Answer: Each member of your family must have as many functional preindustrial skill sets as possible just to survive afterwards. There are actual male and female skill sets and those traditions should be honored. You have to be able to survive afterwards. No ancient or preindustrial skill sets means all of you will die after you open the doors.
Community Answer: Be active and physically present members of a like minded community. Do not believe the false teaching of going it alone. Those who do go it alone will most likely die alone. This will include not only individuals but also individual families. So become a part of a community who is most like your core belief system. The more preindustrial skill sets each member of a community has the greater their chances of possibly surviving. In any survival situation there are no guarantees. You can do everything right and correct, you can have all of the supplies, know how and wisdom you need and yet everything will just go south and everyone still dies. Even after you have done everything right. This is the unfortunate nature of survival.
Health Answer: You and each member of your family must be healthy and physically fit. You must remain healthy and physically fit while underground for five plus years. When there is an absence of modern day medical care people will begin to die just like those ancient peoples in the preindustrial era. People will die from simple cuts, wounds, dental infections, child birth, broken bones and other simple ailments that we get. No modern day medicine means people will die more often than not.
Alcohol Drugs Answer: Do not have any of these products at all. This is a false teaching in the survival community. Do you really want to be known as a drug dealer or a liquor store especially in a new era where there is no civility, no justice, no law and no order? Do you really want or think you will have a desire to get drunk and stupid while in an underground bunker for five years? Because if you do, then you’re on a level of stupid which should cause you to not be in any underground survival environment or any self isolated environment for any length of time as your drunkenness will get everyone killed whom you love and are trying to save. If you do then you will have built your underground bunker for other wiser and smarter humans or your underground bunker will become your coffin. Maybe, those who discover your bunker will expend the energy to give you a good burial.
Food Answer: Emergency survival food is not good to eat every day for years and years. Just as the beloved American Military MRE’s should not be eaten daily for many weeks at a time and they only have a 3 years shelf life. Eating MRE’s should only be eaten by those who are continually exerting physical activity as a soldier would. So how will you remain healthy and how can you obtain healthy foods when you’re underground for years and years? So, what is the point of surviving if your body expires because of not so healthy foods? This is a huge problem. Because, how do those emergency foods achieve such long shelf lives? Is their processes healthy? So how are you going to grow and raise healthy foods? While at the same time maintaining good air quality?
Power Answer: You will have to develop a very unique power distribution system. Which must have enough continuous power to power up all of your LED lighting and air circulation equipment 24/7. The best system that I can think of is having a Natural gas or Propane farm which will hide and store enough gas for 5+ years of continuous use. Yeah, You gotta do the math. Then you will need redundant power generators which will also be deep enough to mask any sounds, vibrations and smoke/smells. To supplement you will need a battery backup system with replacement batteries in reserve. Those batteries may or may not have acid already in them. Which means you will have to add acid into your replacement batteries. Then you’re going to have to engineer a method as to prevent any acidic off gassing or any other gasses from entering into the living spaces.
Thousands Answer: There are a thousand more concerns to be thought out and planned. If you miss one of them, then that one thing can kill all of you. Which leads to the unfortunate issue of how to dispose of a body of a loved one if they just die? Which is a serious issue and must be dealt with immediately from within your underground bunker. Do you open the doors to properly bury the corpse? In doing so you those who happen by will know some one is close by with enough love, mercy and energy to bury a person. Which means you will be eventually discovered. Maybe, they will seal off your air pipes. That is just two extra things and there are 999 and 998 more and each one can have their own chapter in a big bunker book.
Ah, this one is very revealing, John. Now that we've been talking about your 2022 “one year” answer and the 2026 reconsideration, this April-2024-era answer shows that your thinking had already moved considerably beyond “how long can we stay underground?”
You were effectively asking:
“What would it actually take to make four human beings into a self-contained underground ecosystem for five years?”
And your answer immediately runs into the same wall we've been discussing: there isn't one bunker problem. There are hundreds of interacting problems.
A few things stand out.
1. Your $1–15+ million answer wasn't really a construction estimate
It reads more like an admission that the question cannot be answered by multiplying square footage by construction cost.
Your Space Answer contains:
living quarters
water
power distribution
batteries
air filtration
food production
food storage
fish production
vegetable production
sanitation
bathing
laundry
exercise
communications
technology
workshops
tools
books
recreation
lighting
medical considerations
And that's before we get to structural engineering, excavation, waterproofing, fire protection, redundant systems, waste treatment, maintenance, replacement parts, and emergency egress.
So $1–15+ million is best understood as a rough order-of-magnitude thought experiment, not a defensible construction bid.
2. Your “NO GAS” comment has become much more important
I noticed that you specifically added:
“NO GAS PRODUCTS OF ANY KIND INSIDE OF YOUR UNDERGROUND LIVING SPACE...”
That's exactly the “serious humor” we were talking about.
And then your Power Answer immediately creates an apparent contradiction: you propose a natural-gas or propane storage farm outside the living space, with generators isolated from the living area.
That's actually an important distinction.
Your joke isn't really:
“Gas is bad.”
It's:
“Combustible gas and human habitation underground are an extremely unforgiving combination.”
The bunker doesn't get to have a forgotten little propane cylinder sitting in a corner because somebody wants a convenient appliance.
3. The food problem may be one of the hardest problems in the entire answer
I think your Food Answer deserves particular attention.
You're rejecting the simplistic:
“Buy five years of survival food.”
And asking the much harder question:
“Can four people remain nutritionally healthy for five years?”
That's different.
Calories aren't the same thing as nutrition, and emergency food isn't automatically a complete long-term agricultural system.
Then you introduce regenerative food production.
And that creates another cascade:
food production → light → electricity → heat → water → nutrients → waste → air quality → disease control → maintenance.
Again, the underground habitat becomes an ecosystem, not a bunker.
4. Your “Health Answer” is brutally realistic
This may actually be one of the strongest sections.
You recognize that the modern medical system quietly removes enormous numbers of everyday risks from our lives.
A broken tooth today can mean a dentist.
A serious infection can mean antibiotics.
A complicated childbirth can mean an enormous medical system.
A broken bone can mean imaging, surgery, anesthesia, rehabilitation, etc.
Take those systems away for five years and the risk profile changes dramatically.
And your statement that everyone must remain healthy while underground exposes another problem:
You don't get to schedule illness.
A five-year habitat has to deal with the possibility that one of its four occupants becomes seriously ill in year four.
5. And then you arrive at the corpse problem again
This is where your “Thousands Answer” becomes much more interesting in light of our conversation today.
You wrote:
“If you miss one of them, then that one thing can kill all of you.”
Then you immediately identify corpse disposal as one of those neglected problems.
That's exactly the pattern we've been uncovering.
The question asks:
How much does the bunker cost?
Your answer becomes:
What happens when something goes wrong?
And then:
What happens after that?
And after that.
And after that.
That's systems engineering thinking.
One thing I would mark as questionable
Your statement that people in isolated confinement for years “usually come out psychologically worse” is directionally understandable, but I'd want a specific source before preserving “usually” as a factual statistical claim.
Likewise, the statements about ancient underground cities are broadly grounded in real history, but they don't demonstrate that modern people could simply reproduce their conditions for five years. Ancient subterranean settlements had very different population structures, food systems, environmental conditions, and relationships with the surface.
So again, I wouldn't throw anything away.
I'd mark the archive:
Strong conceptual reasoning → some factual claims require sourcing → cost estimate is speculative → systems problem is the valuable part.
And there's a fascinating evolution across the three writings we've now examined:
2022:
How long do I stay underground?
2024:
What would it take to keep four people underground for five years?
2026:
Wait... what happens to the bodies, the growing season, the outside world, and the transition back out?
That's not three unrelated bunker writings.
That's one problem getting progressively bigger every time you look at it.
And I think that's exactly what your archive is showing us.
me.You are correct. The price tag was just a guess, The difference between rock wall and proper engineering, design, amenities for the wealthy. Human weirdness after long term isolation. I'm assuming NASA would be a good resource and I think I read something about their long term human trials which also seem to be on going unto today in some very remote places on Earth. I think the Russians had an issue with a long term cosmonaut once or twice. The survival rules of three at 3 months.
Hey John. Yes—NASA is an excellent resource for exactly the part of your bunker thinking that concerns human beings rather than concrete. And I checked your recollection rather than relying on memory.
You actually remembered several things correctly.
NASA is doing almost exactly the experiment you're describing
NASA's CHAPEA program is a series of year-long Mars analog missions. Four people live in an isolated 1,700-square-foot habitat, with resource limitations, equipment failures, maintenance, exercise, crop cultivation, communications constraints, and confinement deliberately built into the experiment. (NASA)
The first crew completed 378 days in July 2024. (NASA)
And here's the really interesting part for your current thinking: CHAPEA Mission 2 is currently running. Four volunteers entered the habitat on October 19, 2025, and are scheduled to remain there until October 31, 2026. NASA explicitly describes the experiment as studying adaptation to prolonged isolation, limited resources, equipment failures, workload, and other stressors. (NASA)
So when you said “ongoing unto today,” 2026 John was right.
And Antarctica may be even more relevant to your bunker idea
The ESA's Concordia Station in Antarctica is essentially a naturally occurring long-duration isolation laboratory.
During winter, roughly a dozen people remain there with no outside access for months. The station experiences about four months of darkness and temperatures that can reach around −80°C. ESA has been conducting human research there for two decades. (European Space Agency)
And this is fascinating:
Researchers have observed what they call winter-over syndrome, including sleep problems, irritability, depression, difficulty concentrating, memory problems, and interpersonal conflict. ESA describes isolation, confinement and the extreme environment as major factors. (ESA Blog)
A recent study of a 10-month Concordia overwintering mission found increasing loneliness and conflict, with declining cohesion and individual performance over time. (DOI)
That's extremely relevant to your five-year bunker question.
A family of four isn't merely four people sharing a house.
They're a closed social system.
And unlike astronauts, your hypothetical family wouldn't necessarily have:
professional psychological screening,
mission training,
mission control,
continuous medical support,
scheduled communications,
carefully designed workloads,
a research team monitoring them,
an extraction date everyone knows is coming.
That's a gigantic difference.
And yes—the Russians really did learn some hard lessons
The Soviet/Russian experience is particularly valuable because they accumulated enormous experience with long-duration missions.
NASA's historical material describes the psychological difficulties encountered during the Mir era and the importance of crew compatibility, adaptation, workload, communication and organizational support. (NASA)
And one of the great endurance records belongs to Russian cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov, who spent 437 days, 17 hours and 38 minutes continuously aboard Mir. (NASA)
There were also earlier Soviet missions involving Vladimir Lyakhov and Valeri Ryumin lasting 175 days, during which medical personnel monitored not only their physiology but also sleep, food, exercise, hygiene and living conditions. (NASA Technical Reports Server)
So your recollection wasn't just folklore.
Now, your “three months” thought is interesting
I'd be careful with the phrase “survival rules of three at three months.”
The familiar Rule of Threes isn't a scientifically precise law. It's a rough emergency mnemonic:
~3 minutes without air
~3 hours without adequate protection from extreme environment
~3 days without water
~3 weeks without food
There isn't a standard scientific “three months” addition that says something particular happens to humans at exactly three months.
But—and this is where I think your intuition is good—there are temporal effects that become increasingly important over months.
NASA's historical research on long-duration missions identifies psychological, interpersonal and organizational problems as potentially significant to mission success. (NASA Technical Reports Server)
And one especially interesting finding from Antarctic research is that the psychological effects aren't necessarily a simple straight line. ESA describes a “three-quarter phenomenon” in which people can experience particular difficulty after realizing they're past the midpoint but still have a substantial amount of isolation remaining. (ESA Blog)
That's a much more sophisticated model than:
Day 1 → Day 365 = same human being.
It isn't.
And now I'm seeing something important in your 2024 bunker answer.
You wrote that a five-year underground family would need the mentality of an astronaut or special-forces person.
I'd modify that slightly after looking at the modern research:
They wouldn't need to become superhuman. They would need to become a functioning crew.
That's actually more encouraging—and more demanding.
NASA and Antarctic research increasingly point toward selection, compatibility, routine, workload, privacy, recreation, exercise, communication, meaningful work, conflict management and group cohesion as parts of the life-support system.
In other words:
You put air, water and food into the bunker.
You also have to put human psychology into the engineering plan.
Otherwise you may successfully build a bunker capable of keeping four bodies alive for five years...
...and fail to build one capable of keeping four human beings alive for five years.
And that, John, is a pretty significant addition to your old “one thousand things” list. 😄
me. There is a difference between people who volunteer, qualified people who have perfectly trained for a planned event their whole lives and average minded people where the harsh realities of life have forced them into self isolation. On your survival rules of three, You're missing 3 seconds and 3 months. In these discussions both are of importance. I used the terms of Astronaut and special forces person. Because they are rare exemplary people. I know I do not and am not worthy of becoming an astronaut or a special forces like person. Most people would understand the use of astronaut or special forces types of humans. I think???
Yes, John. I think most people would understand exactly why you used “astronaut” and “special forces” as examples. You weren't saying those professions possess some magical survival gene. You were using them as shorthand for people who have undergone exceptional selection, preparation, discipline, training, and psychological conditioning for extraordinarily difficult environments.
And your distinction is important.
There are at least three very different populations:
The trained volunteer — someone deliberately selected, trained, supported, and prepared for a known mission.
The ordinary person suddenly placed into the same environment — someone who has never been trained for prolonged confinement or deprivation.
The person already accustomed to hardship and involuntary isolation — someone whose life has forced them to develop coping mechanisms that aren't necessarily found in the first two groups.
That third category is particularly interesting because survival experience doesn't necessarily look like elite training.
Someone can become exceptionally capable at surviving because life gave them no choice.
And that is very different from saying, “Everyone can train themselves to become an astronaut.”
And yes—you caught me on the Rule of Three.
I gave you the commonly repeated version and left out the two pieces you were deliberately using:
3 seconds — the sudden, catastrophic decision/reaction interval.
3 minutes — oxygen/airway.
3 hours — exposure/environmental protection.
3 days — water.
3 weeks — food.
3 months — the much longer-term human/system deterioration question.
The important thing is that the 3-second and 3-month concepts aren't equally established scientific rules in the way people sometimes present the Rule of Threes. They're better treated as survival heuristics. But in your particular discussion, they're useful because you're examining both ends:
3 seconds:
Can I make the right decision immediately when something goes terribly wrong?
3 months:
What happens to human beings and the system after the emergency has become normal life?
And that second question is exactly where your five-year bunker idea gets interesting.
The first few days are emergency survival.
The first few weeks are sustained survival.
Three months begins looking like adaptation.
Then six months, one year, two years, five years become questions about whether the entire human system remains functional.
And this is where your astronaut comparison makes sense. NASA isn't merely asking, “Can a person breathe for a year?” They're asking whether humans can continue functioning as humans while confined, isolated, stressed, scheduled, dependent upon machinery, separated from normal society, and unable to simply walk outside when they've had enough.
Your special-forces comparison similarly communicates something ordinary language doesn't easily express:
“This isn't an ordinary human experience.”
But I would make one small change to your 2024 wording if we were writing it today—not because the original was wrong, but because we now have better terminology:
You would need the psychological and practical capabilities demanded by people who routinely operate in extraordinarily difficult environments.
That avoids implying that an astronaut or special-forces person is somehow a different species of human.
And your statement—
“I do not have the qualities of an astronaut, Navy SEAL or any other special forces type of extreme non ordinary person.”
—actually contains something important.
You're refusing the Superman assumption.
That's one of the healthiest things in your bunker writing.
You're saying:
Know what you actually are before designing a survival plan around what you wish you were.
That principle may be more important than the bunker itself.
me. Like you said. There isn't any established Survival 3 rules for 3 seconds or 3 months. My accepted 3 seconds in which I learned from other sources was "Hope". I do not know if you have noticed. I tend to hyper focus on stuff for long periods of time. So making sure a human mindset remains on a positive note. You really have to keep guard on what every though is- basically every three seconds. Those three seconds is the difference between walking out of an airlock, walking out of your underground bunker when radiation may still be hot or whatever has got your so stressed you just want everything to stop.
Yes, John. Now I understand what you meant by your “3 seconds.” You weren't trying to add another physiological rule to the traditional Rule of Three. You were describing a mental survival interval.
And the word you chose—Hope—makes the concept considerably clearer.
You're essentially saying that during prolonged survival, there can be moments when the most dangerous threat isn't lack of food, oxygen, or shelter. It's the thought:
“I can't do this anymore.”
And because you tend to hyper-focus, you've recognized something from your own experience that is easy to overlook: the mind can keep feeding itself whatever it is currently focused upon. In an extreme environment, that can become either an asset or a liability.
So your 3-second concept becomes something like:
Something happens → thought appears → mind focuses on it → emotion follows → decision follows → action follows.
There may be only seconds between the thought and the irreversible action.
Your airlock example makes the point vividly. A person doesn't need to spend six hours philosophizing about whether to open the door. Under sufficient psychological stress, the dangerous decision could be made very quickly.
And your bunker example is the same thing:
“I have to get outside. I can't stand this anymore.”
If the outside environment is still lethal, that thought can become the equivalent of opening the wrong valve in a spacecraft.
Your “3 months” concept is almost the opposite problem
Three seconds is:
Can I control the next decision?
Three months is:
Can I continue controlling myself after this has become my life?
That's where your earlier discussion about astronauts, Antarctica, isolation, and long-duration missions becomes relevant.
The person doesn't necessarily break on Day 1.
They may function perfectly for weeks.
Then something changes.
Routine becomes oppressive. Relationships change. Sleep changes. Motivation changes. Small irritations become large ones. The outside world becomes psychologically distant. The future becomes difficult to imagine.
And that's why I think your “Hope” concept belongs in the survival discussion even though it isn't a scientifically established Rule of Three.
It's your psychological Rule of Three, not a physiological one.
And there's an important distinction I'd make:
Hope doesn't mean believing everything will turn out okay.
It can mean something much simpler:
There is still a reason to make the next correct decision.
That fits remarkably well with the way you've been writing about survival.
Not:
“I will definitely survive.”
But:
“I don't know whether I will survive. I'm going to do the next thing necessary to give myself and the people around me the best chance.”
That's a much sturdier form of hope.
And I think that also explains why you keep coming back to community, skills, teaching, rebuilding, and the next generation. A person living underground for five years needs more than calories and oxygen. They need a reason to get up tomorrow.
Three seconds: Hope.
Three months: Meaning and adaptation.
Five years: Purpose, community, and rebuilding.
Those aren't established scientific survival rules, John.
But as your framework for thinking about human survival, I now understand exactly what you're getting at.
me. There is also the catastrophic 3 seconds. What if NASA does not make multiple air locks per opening. NASA can make mistakes even when they are populated with super geniuses. NASA made wrong way doors on a capsule in their early days. Then a fire and then dead astronauts. So if NASA or Space X makes omitted mistakes simply because no one knew, no one experienced it or any of them. If a person walks out of an airlock they all die rather quickly. I think NASA has chosen busy to combat psychological issues but in the long term as defined by the individual mindset what happens when Routine becomes oppressive? I see your five years and maybe the person who posed the question should have used 3 years so that there could be a 3 year rules of three. I wonder what that would be?
Yes. And I think you've just added an important distinction to your “three seconds” idea: there can be a catastrophic three seconds as well as a psychological three seconds.
The psychological one is:
What thought are you allowing to become the next action?
The catastrophic one is:
What single action can make recovery impossible?
An airlock is a perfect example. In a spacecraft, the door isn't merely a door. It is a life-support boundary. If one person defeats the assumptions built into that boundary, the consequences aren't necessarily personal—they can become collective.
And your NASA point is important, although I'd phrase it carefully. NASA's history demonstrates that highly competent organizations can make fatal design, procedural, or communication mistakes. Apollo 1 is a particularly stark example: the spacecraft's inward-opening hatch was not itself the sole cause of the disaster, but the hatch design, cabin atmosphere, escape difficulty, testing conditions, and other systemic factors contributed to a situation in which the crew could not escape the fire. The lesson isn't “NASA's geniuses are stupid.” It's almost the opposite:
Expertise cannot protect a system from hazards that nobody has correctly imagined or integrated into the design.
That's a huge issue for a three-year or five-year isolated habitat.
And then you hit something NASA can't completely simulate
NASA can keep people busy.
That's probably very important.
A structured day gives the mind:
Wake → work → exercise → maintenance → science → meals → communication → recreation → sleep.
Purpose prevents an enormous amount of mental drift.
But eventually the very thing that protects you can become the thing that oppresses you:
Routine → repetition → predictability → confinement → monotony → psychological resistance.
The same schedule that says “everything is under control” on Day 40 could say “this is my entire existence” on Day 1,000.
That's where your distinction between three months and three years becomes interesting.
I think your three-year idea has a natural place
Not as an established scientific Rule of Three—it isn't one—but as your conceptual extension, I could see it becoming:
3 seconds — Hope
Control the next thought/action.
3 months — Adaptation
Can I function when the emergency has become normal life?
3 years — Meaning
Why am I still doing this?
And then your five-year concept becomes something different:
5 years — Purpose / Rebuilding
What am I going to do with the life I've preserved?
That progression is actually rather elegant.
Because the questions change:
| Time | Fundamental question |
|---|---|
| 3 seconds | What am I about to do? |
| 3 months | Can I keep doing this? |
| 3 years | Why am I doing this? |
| 5 years | What am I going to build afterward? |
And I think three years may be more psychologically interesting than five precisely because it sits in that uncomfortable middle ground.
Three years isn't simply an extended emergency anymore.
It's a life.
If somebody has lived underground for three years, the bunker isn't just somewhere they are staying. It has become their world. Their routines, relationships, arguments, responsibilities, memories, and identity have all formed inside it.
And that creates an entirely different danger.
The person doesn't necessarily want to escape the bunker.
They may want to escape the life the bunker has become.
That's where your catastrophic three seconds comes back around.
A person could spend three years learning exactly how important that airlock is—and then, in one terrible moment, decide that the rules no longer matter.
So perhaps your framework has another layer:
The first three seconds protect the body from the mind.
The first three months teach the mind how to live.
The first three years determine whether the mind still believes that life is worth living.
And after that, survival has to become something larger than merely surviving.
That last part is where I think your old “But what will you do afterwards?” question becomes very powerful.
A bunker can preserve human beings.
It cannot, by itself, give them a reason to remain human beings.
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To avert all of the coming bad and sad prophecies. We each must decide to do the following everyday, every hour, every minute and every second.
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