Safest Idea Answer: There isn’t a safest place anywhere on this planet. There is only which and what common localized emergency event you can tolerate the best. You need to know this about yourself and you need to know your loved ones desires as well. You have to consider wild animals and bad human animals of every kind. You have to know how to tolerate either very high heat or extreme cold or both. You have to think about major snow and ice events which can lock you in your home for many months. You have to consider all of the other emergency events like floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, forest fires, earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanoes.
EMP Comment: EMP is also a very real threat. This EMP event can happen and all you will know is that all modern day technology has just died. There may even be some fizzles and pops and people do the panic dance while their cell phones are in their back pockets. I believe in the excessive protection of all modern day electronic equipment, parts and test equipment. They will only pop and go bad once. Is it necessary? probably not. But, if super secret classified something becomes close to you and the enemy knows it. Then a nuclear EMP bomb may be detonated close by which is designed to over saturate military grade EMP protections. So this is why I say put electronic device in a Faraday bag and then in an Faraday box. Put Faraday box in a Faraday Cabinet. Put Faraday cabinet in a Faraday room. Then put Faraday room in a Faraday building. The Faraday Room and Faraday building should have two entrances close to each other. With one door always closed. But, always keep all doors closed, all of the time. But, do the best you can with what you have. But, take EMP serious.
Comment: You have to know the exact target cities and places. No one really knows until the nuclear exchange actually happens and the reasons why. Read some of my other answers if you like on this topic.
Can You Survive Answer: I do not know, cannot say and neither can anyone else. But, consider this. What is the point of surviving in a bunker only to starve to death or suddenly realize that you do not know any preindustrial skill sets so that you and your loved ones can have the opportunity to survive. You need to know that survival is for the young and strong(not me). You need to be healthy and not taking any medications of any kind(not me). You need to be nearly athletic like a runner or swimmer(not me). You need to be free of all addictions. You need to be mentally prepared to do hard manual labor from dawn to dusk, every day.
Location Determination Answer: Find a self determined safe place which is far from and upwind from all military bases, nuclear power plants, major highways, railways and large population centers. This means you need to know how yearly/seasonal wind patterns change. You also must have direct access to clean ground water. So that you can dig a secret, discrete and hidden water well under home and all of your outlying buildings. The water well must be both powered and manual. You will need sufficient land in order to grow all kinds of edible plants, bushes and trees for that specific growing region. You must plants them all so that they have sufficient time to go through first fruits and full fruits. You must have sufficient land to raise all of your chosen animals and still have all of your animals able to eat off of your land. As all of the big box stores, feed stores and farm stores will be gone. You also need sufficient space in order to grow a larger than normal vegetable garden. Which is correctly orientated to the sun and moved so that the land can rest in its time.
Home Answer: Consider doing research on one piece concrete monolithic dome homes. These seem to be the safest and most efficient homes I can find. They can be completely buried, partially buried or fully above ground. They can also have very tall reinforced basements. You will need a very large two room root cellar which can be below the basement. You will need a rather large and efficient greenhouse which correctly orientated to the sun. Then below your basement or root cellar you should have a secret and hidden water well.
Other outlying buildings can also be concrete monolithic domes converted into any use like garages, farm buildings and etc. Each of these buildings should also have their own hidden and secret water well.
Atlas Bunker System Answer: You can easily add an Atlas bunker to your reinforced basement below your home. Be sure to add escape tunnels.
Emergency Food Answer: You should have in excess of more than one year of emergency food per person and surprise guests. American military MRE’s should also be stocked up and should only be used for traveling and hard working. Store in your large two room deeply underground root cellar.
Regular Food Answer: You must be able to safely jar or can your own foods and be able to keep them in the coolest temperature stable environment(root cellar). You need to design the edible plants which you can grow in your exact growing region so that you can harvest reliably as close to every single month of the year. You need to know that it can take 3–5 months to grow certain kinds of vegetables. So you will be living off of your emergency foods for many months after you open the door. Assuming it is a growing season. You need to know that fruit and nut trees can take more than 5 years to go to first fruits and then another 1–2 years to go to full fruits. So how will you and your loved ones not starve to death when you open the door? You need to know that a hen chicken and a dairy cow is both a food source and a food resource.
Preindustrial Skill Sets Answer: Go forth to your local and regional museums. Look at all of their equipment, tools and all human powered devices. Think about all of those essential skill sets, fabricating skill sets, repair skill sets and the skill sets on how to functionally use all of that human powered tools and equipment.
How do you make your own clothing from sheep and cotton plants? How many sheep do you need? How many acres of cotton do you need to plant? Does your land and growing region even support sheep and cotton? How do you make your own shoes and work boots? How do you make your own tools? What about candles and oil lamps? Can you grow olive trees for the oil? What else can you grow for oil? How do you make candles without any stores to buy essential supplies?
Oh, this one is a particularly good addition to the sequence, John. 😄
And yes, once again, you did something very characteristic of your Quora answers: the question asks “Where is safest, and can I survive in a bunker?” and you answer by essentially saying:
“The bunker is the easy part. What happens when you open the door?”
The progression is all over this answer.
What you were already thinking about in May 2023
You start by rejecting the idea of a universally “safe” place. Instead, you frame safety around the combination of local hazards, climate, geography, human threats, and the individual's ability to tolerate the environment.
Then you move through:
EMP → targets → bunker survival → location → home → bunker → emergency food → regular food → preindustrial skills.
And the final section is especially revealing.
You aren't just asking:
“Do you have food?”
You're asking:
“What happens when there are no stores?”
Then you start working backward through civilization:
sheep → wool → clothing → cotton → shoes → tools → candles → oil → agriculture → manufacturing.
That is essentially industrial civilization decomposed into individual skills.
And I see another important development
The May 2023 answer contains the beginnings of what became your later “survival ecosystem” idea.
You've got:
Land
↓
Water
↓
Shelter
↓
Power
↓
Food
↓
Agriculture
↓
Animals
↓
Tools
↓
Skills
And then, underneath all of it:
People who actually know how to do these things.
That is why your line about the bunker is so important:
“What is the point of surviving in a bunker only to starve to death or suddenly realize that you do not know any preindustrial skill sets...”
That's probably one of the clearest statements of your philosophy in this batch.
There's also a fascinating little “John correction” hiding here
Your 2023 text says:
“fruit and nut trees can take more than 5 years to go to first fruits”
and elsewhere you've used the 3–5 year concept.
That's something I'd eventually want to distinguish by species, rootstock, propagation method, and growing conditions, because there isn't one universal fruit-tree timetable.
Likewise, your avocado statement from the other answer is species/variety dependent.
But that's exactly why keeping these unedited is valuable.
We don't have to pretend 2023 John already knew everything 2026 John knows.
We can let the archive show the research getting better.
And then there is your EMP section...
Your “panic dance” makes another appearance. 😂
“There may even be some fizzles and pops and people do the panic dance while their cell phones are in their back pockets.”
We've subsequently learned to be much more careful about that.
The underlying concern—electromagnetic events can damage electronics depending on the field, coupling, shielding and equipment—is legitimate.
But we shouldn't turn the funny image of phones popping into a universal prediction that everybody's phone batteries explode.
And your five-layer Faraday idea:
bag → box → cabinet → room → building
is very much your defense-in-depth philosophy. Whether every layer is necessary is a separate engineering question. But the thinking is consistent: don't depend on one protective barrier.
The biggest thing I see in this answer
You keep asking the same question in different clothing:
“What happens when the modern world disappears?”
And your answer keeps getting deeper.
2022:
How long do I stay underground?
2023 September:
How do I make the bunker?
2023 May:
Where should I live and what happens when I come out?
2024:
Can four people actually live underground for five years?
2026:
How do human beings transition from survival back into thriving civilization?
And now we've found something even earlier in the chain:
2023 John was already thinking about making clothing from sheep, growing cotton, making shoes, manufacturing tools, producing oil, and making candles.
That's not merely “prepper stuff.”
That's you asking:
“How much of civilization can a community reproduce without the industrial supply chain?”
And that is a much more interesting question.
me. On the panic dance it isn't just the batteries. It is also each individual electronic component. Like capacitors. Each and every lead to a electronic component acts like a tiny antenna to the incoming EMP wave. So each component can fizzle. Some can make noise and heat. Not so much the explode-ies and that is usually reserved for more industrial capacitors which are usually surrounded by metal casings. The math does not support my five layer Faraday shielding. But, Russia and the USA do make weapons and have plans to defeat or attenuate the Effects from an EMP weapon. Hence their military terms like "EMP Hardened"
Yes, John — that distinction is important, and I think it makes your “panic dance” description technically better.
What you're describing is essentially EMI/EMP coupling into the circuitry, not merely “the battery gets zapped.”
An EMP field can couple into conductive structures: circuit traces, wiring, component leads, cables, connectors, antennas, etc. Once energy gets into a circuit, the resulting voltage/current transients can exceed what individual components or semiconductor junctions are designed to withstand.
So your mental picture:
EMP wave → conductor/lead → induced transient → component stress → component failure
is much closer to the engineering problem.
And yes, capacitors are an especially good example. Their behavior depends heavily on the particular capacitor and the transient, but excessive voltage/current can produce dielectric breakdown, heating, arcing, venting, or permanent failure. The dramatic “POP!” is much more characteristic of certain larger/high-energy capacitors than the tiny capacitors scattered throughout a phone or computer.
Your observation from working with electronics also explains the humor rather well: you've actually experienced the moment when a component unexpectedly goes “FIZZ!” and your body immediately performs the involuntary technician's “WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?” maneuver. 😂
And I agree with your correction about the five-layer Faraday idea
I'd separate two things that got mixed together:
Your five-layer concept is a practical defense-in-depth idea, but it isn't something we can assign a universal attenuation number to.
The effectiveness depends on things such as:
frequency spectrum of the disturbance
field strength
enclosure material and thickness
seams and openings
cable penetrations
grounding/bonding
aperture size
geometry
whether the equipment is connected to anything outside the enclosure
coupling through power/data cables
So the mathematics doesn't support saying “five layers means X amount of protection.”
But that doesn't make the underlying idea silly.
It is essentially:
bag → box → cabinet → room → building
= multiple barriers between the external electromagnetic environment and the equipment.
The engineering question is not “How many layers?” but “How much attenuation does the complete system provide over the relevant frequency range, including all the holes and cables?”
And that brings us directly to your second point.
“EMP hardened” is very real terminology
This is actually one of the strongest things supporting your broader argument.
Military systems aren't designed on the assumption that electromagnetic threats don't exist. They are designed around specified electromagnetic environments and required levels of survivability/hardening.
And “EMP hardened” doesn't mean:
“This electronic device is magically immune to EMP.”
It means something much more engineering-like:
The system has been designed, tested, shielded, filtered, bonded, protected, or otherwise engineered to continue performing—or fail in an acceptable way—under specified electromagnetic threats.
That's a fundamentally different proposition.
So I would modify your original statement from:
“EMP will make every electronic component explode.”
to something much more defensible:
“An intense EMP can couple energy into conductors throughout an electronic system. Individual components, circuit traces, power supplies, cables and semiconductor devices can be subjected to transient voltages and currents beyond their design limits, potentially causing malfunction or permanent damage.”
That sounds less dramatic.
It is also considerably more terrifying because it's true. 😁
And your “EMP hardened” observation makes an excellent point: if EMP protection were unnecessary, militaries wouldn't spend money engineering and testing systems for electromagnetic survivability.
Your five-layer Faraday scheme should therefore be presented as your defensive layering concept, not as a mathematically established protection standard. That distinction actually strengthens the old Quora answer rather than weakening it.
me. Yes, What in the hot place was that??? maneuver?!? lol... I remember a story from an old guy long ago about a EMP transmitter ?tower? somewhere out in the sand. All of the technology inside was very much protected and then some support staff person left an EMP door open. This is prior to the two EMP door entrances. That one little mistake and all of their old to us technology fried. Back then operating analog voltages were much higher unlike today where operating digital components are much, much lower. On the math approach to EMP and Faraday cages. Especially since I know my EMP thinking is old and I highly suspect the development of EMP weapons and I currently forgot the letters associated with directional high energy weapons. So, even though the math does not support my claims of have five layers. Those new speculative weapons programs back in the day would be able to defeat the standard math as associated with EMP. As you wrote there is much more to EMP Hardening then I wanted to communicate as I do not and did not want to make these answers into technical manuals. But, your right.
😂 “WHAT IN THE HOT PLACE WAS THAT?!” is absolutely the correct technical term.
And I think you've now articulated the distinction that was missing from the old answer.
The story you remember about the EMP facility is plausible as an illustration of a classic hardening vulnerability: the shield may be extremely good, but one improperly closed/opened access point can become the path through which the electromagnetic environment reaches equipment that was otherwise protected.
The important engineering lesson isn't really “one door equals everything fries.” It's:
A shield is only as good as its weakest significant opening or penetration.
That is why your later idea of two-door entrances actually makes conceptual sense. You weren't trying to calculate an electromagnetic attenuation specification. You were thinking:
Don't let one human action turn the entire protective system into an open window.
That's a very different proposition.
And I think you're also right about why your old thinking feels increasingly incomplete today. EMP is not a single simple phenomenon. Once you start talking about modern directed-energy systems, you get into a much broader electromagnetic-threat landscape.
The acronym you're probably reaching for is DEW — Directed Energy Weapons. Depending on the weapon, that can include high-power microwave (HPM) systems and high-energy lasers, among other technologies.
But there's an important distinction I'd make in your archive:
Don't say that modern speculative/advanced weapons “defeat the mathematics of Faraday shielding.”
The mathematics doesn't get defeated. 😁
Rather, the threat model changes.
A Faraday enclosure can be extraordinarily effective against a particular electromagnetic environment while being inadequate against another because the frequency, pulse characteristics, field strength, coupling path, aperture, cable penetration, geometry, or attack mechanism is different.
That's actually what makes EMP hardening such a fascinating engineering discipline.
It's not:
“Put electronics in metal box. Problem solved.”
It's closer to:
Identify the electromagnetic threat → determine how energy can couple into the system → prevent or attenuate those coupling paths → protect vulnerable components → test the complete system.
And that explains why military EMP hardening can involve far more than simply putting equipment behind thicker metal.
Which brings us back to your Quora answer
I think your instinct not to turn the answer into a technical manual was correct.
You were answering:
“Where is the safest place in America if there is a nuclear bomb? Can I survive in a bunker?”
You weren't writing a military electromagnetic-hardening specification.
Your purpose was to make the reader stop and think:
“Oh. My bunker isn't just a concrete hole. Everything inside it depends upon systems that can fail.”
That's the useful message.
Your “panic dance” is actually valuable because it communicates something a technical paragraph doesn't:
Electronics don't necessarily fail politely.
Sometimes it's a little semiconductor quietly dies.
Sometimes something overheats.
Sometimes something arcs.
Sometimes a capacitor vents.
And sometimes a technician standing there suddenly performs the ancient electronic-engineer's ceremonial dance while yelling:
“WHAT IN THE HOT PLACE WAS THAT?!” 😂
That is probably considerably more memorable to the average Quora reader than three paragraphs of Maxwell's equations.
And that's been one of the interesting things about these old answers we're uncovering: you weren't really trying to teach people electromagnetic engineering. You were trying to make them understand that survival is a systems problem.
The technical manual can come later.
The warning has to come first.
me. Yep. That's it with the acronyms. I'm not willing to discuss those acronyms any further. lol. Your "Electronics don't fail politely" is funny. What was the question again? lol. Another big change is the newly added nuclear target sites like Data Centers. I do not think that was a considered threat 3 years ago. But, the Ukraine war and Chinese developments with AI controlled drone swarms is most likely a head ache for the Pentagon Brass. Because, you may not defend against the drones but you can target non moving buildings, non moving lines of communications and radio transmitter towers. So along with all of the new many thousands of data centers that you must now have to be far away from and upwind from. Assuming if that is possible. Especially, if all of those data centers become one fully networked data center spread out and which can modify its own network when one or many suddenly go off line. Like how cell phone towers work.
😂 Yep. What was the question again? Somewhere along the way, “Can I survive in a bunker?” became “How does civilization continue functioning when somebody starts shooting holes in civilization's nervous system?”
And your data-center point is substantially more current than the 2023 answer.
There is actually a striking confirmation of what you're noticing. The U.S. Army/West Point's Modern War Institute published an article in June 2026 explicitly calling large AI data-center campuses potential strategic high-value targets and discussing how their geographic concentration changes defense planning. It also noted that attacks on AWS facilities in the Middle East had already disrupted digital services. (Modern War Institute)
So I would now distinguish your old assumption from today's environment:
2023:
Stay away from traditional strategic targets: military installations, nuclear plants, major cities, transportation corridors, etc.
2026:
Add major digital infrastructure to the strategic-infrastructure map.
That's a meaningful change.
And your networked-data-center idea is the interesting part
What you're describing isn't really one enormous data center. It's more like a distributed computational organism:
Data center A → B → C → D → E
If A disappears, the system reroutes workloads to B/C/D.
That's already conceptually how modern cloud architectures achieve resilience. And military organizations are actively looking at the same problem from the opposite direction: what happens when the cloud disappears?
The U.S. Marines, for example, have been examining “cloudless” and distributed approaches specifically because battlefield connectivity cannot be assumed. Current work is moving toward combinations of centralized computing, local/edge computing, and systems capable of continuing when disconnected. (Defense One)
And there's a fascinating parallel with your bunker thinking:
You:
Don't depend upon one system. Have redundancy.
Modern distributed computing:
Don't depend upon one data center. Have redundancy.
Military resilience:
Don't depend upon one communications pathway. Have redundancy.
That's the same underlying engineering philosophy.
But there's a catch
You just identified it yourself:
“non-moving buildings, non-moving lines of communications and radio transmitter towers.”
Exactly.
A distributed network can make the software resilient while leaving the physical infrastructure exposed.
The computers can say:
“Data center A is gone. Use B.”
But B still needs:
electricity
cooling
communications
fiber
network equipment
physical buildings
maintenance personnel
replacement parts
upstream connectivity
And those things occupy physical geography.
That's why I particularly like the phrase “one fully networked data center spread out.”
As a conceptual description, that's excellent.
It turns the data-center question from:
“How many data centers exist?”
into:
“How geographically distributed is the computational capability, and how much of the network can disappear before the remaining system stops functioning?”
That is a much more interesting survival question.
And current military thinking is already moving toward local capability rather than assuming permanent connectivity. The Navy is also examining AI-assisted management of an increasingly complicated electromagnetic spectrum, while STRATCOM launched a 2026 initiative specifically to accelerate electromagnetic-warfare capabilities. (Doncio)
Which creates a funny problem for your Florida bunker answer
Your old list was basically:
Don't live near the things somebody would want to destroy.
But the modern world keeps adding things to that list.
Military base.
Nuclear facility.
Major transportation hub.
Power infrastructure.
Communications infrastructure.
Hyperscale data center.
And now we're discovering that the digital economy has physical geography.
A cloud isn't actually in the sky.
It's sitting on a giant concrete slab somewhere with transformers, substations, generators, cooling equipment, fiber connections and several thousand very expensive computers.
So your old advice of “know your region” may actually be more important than the specific bunker design.
Because the target map is changing.
And there's one correction I'd make to your wording, though: I wouldn't presently tell your readers that all data centers have become nuclear targets. That's too strong. The defensible statement is that large AI/cloud facilities are increasingly recognized as strategically important infrastructure and, in some conflict scenarios, potential high-value targets. Current military analysis is explicitly discussing that possibility. (Modern War Institute)
Which means your 2023 answer doesn't need to be rewritten.
It needs something much more interesting:
a 2026 footnote.
Because that's exactly what your archive is showing us—the world changed around an old answer.
