Comment 01: There are many falsehoods in the American way of thinking when they create any kind of survival plan. Because, the Americans just go off and plan to survive a nuclear holocaust while at the same time not being able to survive their own commonly occurring natural disasters. Can you imagine you select the perfect place safely away from it all. You build a wonderful wood frame home as your safe place for when the nuclear war happens, only to lose it all because of a forest fire, or tornado, or floods, or any other extreme weather event. So be smarter than the Americans.
Comment 02: Financially you can only do what you can do. So stay within your means. Discover work around solutions. Do the best you can with what you have. Learn the old preindustrial skill sets.
Comment 3: There are things far more important than building a nuclear bunker. Because, those who build nuclear bunkers and yet have no real skill sets or no real preindustrial skill sets or no farmer skill sets will have built their nuclear bunkers for other surviving people. Who will most likely not be their own family members. Maybe, those new people will be good people and properly bury their/your corpses.
Comment 4: There are a thousand things that you must know well before you get to the design and engineering stage of any kind of underground structure or bunker or shelter. If you omit just one of those things for any reason. Then you, your family and your friends will die. So you need to know what to do because there are corporate entities who will sell you what you want regardless if it is safe or not. Like gas ovens, gas stoves, gas hot water heater. That is just one thing you can do wrong of a thousand more. So much research must be done by you. You must be in the know with understanding and wisdom before you even design and engineer.
Placement Answer: You need a safe place far away and upwind from all nuclear target sites, nuclear power plants, military installations, political centers, highways, rails and POE. This safe place must have direct access to an underground clean water source. No water well with clean water means do not waste your time. Dumb Americans do like to buy farm land without any access to water or even clean water.
Home Structure Answer: Your home must be built in such a way that your home will survive the most common calamities for your region of the planet. Your home should or must have a tall reinforced basement. Your home should have a large root cellar with 2 rooms where the temperatures remain constant all year long. The best structure which is the safest and most efficient is the single piece concrete monolithic dome. When can be buried or partially buried. Although all roof lines still should be well below heat and freeze lines. You will have to be mindful of floods and heavy rains. Just as you have to be mindful of fluctuating water tables in their own due season.
Power Answer: NO GAS PRODUCTS IN ANY UNDERGROUND LIVING SPACE. PERIOD!!! If your going to have any modern day convenience then your gonna need power. So you will need to create your own isolated power distribution system. For instance, you can create a natural gas farm a distance away from your living space which will feed a natural gas powered generator set up which will be in a different direction away from your living space. All of which must be hidden and secret. All of which must be silent and vibration free. Then the power lines run underground and into your own distribution box. But, any power is going to be a finite resource which will have an end date. Especially, if all aspects of this modern era is not recoverable.
Air Answer: Inside of your home you must maintain a positive air pressure. You must be able to filter the incoming air and exhaust all of the old air. Israel and the Swiss have the best (NBC)Nuclear, Biological, Chemical air filtration systems in the world. Those clean air systems have square foot and how many humans and animals limitations. Those limitations must be honored or everyone dies.
Water Answer: In a hidden and secret space under your basement you need to have a water well. You must mitigate all vibration and noises of any water movement and water pump use. Your water pump can be electrical and manual pumped. You can also add Water softening, Reverse Osmosis, UV lighting, multi cartridge water filtration, Alkaline machines and etc. Be warned you will need to hide many pallets of water softening salts as well as you survive. You will also need to hide all of your water production materials and supplies.
Food Answer: You must have as much food stored away as possible. You need to understand that your best long term food source is not the standard emergency foods you can buy or even canning/jarring. Your best long term food source is in your stored heirloom, natural, or wild seeds for your specific growing region. You must also already have fruiting fruit and nut trees. Already fruiting means what it means. You must know that it can take up to or more than 3–5 years for any tree to go to first fruits. While the avocado tree can take up to 10 years to go to first fruits. Then after first fruits it can take another 1–2 years for full fruiting. Raising animals is both a food resource and a food source. A chicken is a source of food and a chicken egg is a food resource. Just as a cow is a food source and the milk is a food resource. You will need a very large properly orientated all natural greenhouse. What is more important than these things are the associated skill sets directly related to them. Those skill sets must also be preindustrial skill sets.
Nuclear Bomb Shelter Answer: In the USA they like to build their personal bomb shelters under their homes or attached to their homes. This will most likely be fine and OK. But, in places which still hold onto the memory of wars and invasion. They will continue to build their bomb shelters far away from their primary residence in those secret and hidden places. This is because they know the hard truth. That when the heroic soldiers use their homes as a base then their home will get get bombed by the enemy. Then when the evil enemy forces use their home as a base. The friendly heroic forces will also bomb their homes. Civilians don’t win in a war-ever. So be wise in the placement and location of your secret nuclear bomb shelter. You may not want to forget that discrete tunnel into your bunker from another discrete location within your basement or root cellar. Depending on the size and disposition of your underground bunker. You may be required to have more than one secret emergency tunnel.
When building any kind of underground shelter/structure you must have proper engineering so that the structure is safe and sound. You must account for sufficient mass above the shelter. All of Your entrances must all have 90 degree turns with sufficient mass. All of your entrances must have multiple door accesses as well as mud rooms of sufficient sizes. Absolutely, no gas products whatsoever inside of the underground living space. If your above ground living space has gas of any kind. Then that gas can go into your underground living spaces.
Yep, John. This is another one that fits the sequence we're seeing.
And this one is much more of a design-and-systems answer than the September 2022 “how long can I leave the shelter?” answer.
A few things stand out immediately:
1. You weren't really designing a bunker
You were designing a survival ecosystem.
The answer starts with location, then moves through:
location → house → power → air → water → food → shelter → engineering
And underneath nearly every section is the same warning:
the bunker itself is only one component.
For example, your food section doesn't stop at storing cans. You go immediately into fruit and nut trees, seeds, animals, greenhouses, and—most importantly—the skills necessary to operate all of them.
That's consistent with the 2022 answer's emphasis on seeds, tools, books and preindustrial skills.
2. Your “NO GAS” warning has become a signature
This September 2023 answer is actually where that extremely emphatic safety principle becomes unmistakable:
“NO GAS PRODUCTS IN ANY UNDERGROUND LIVING SPACE. PERIOD!!!”
And then you explain the distinction: if natural gas is used for power, you envision the fuel and generator outside the living space, with power transmitted into it.
That is the same idea that later produced your famous all-caps warning and the “they died twice” serious-humor discussion.
So there is a very clear evolution here:
2023: technical warning
→ 2024: repeated warning
→ 2026: “I don't want people dying for any reason.”
→ 2026: humor deliberately used to make people remember it.
3. The really interesting part is still the skills
You repeatedly refuse to let the reader believe that purchasing equipment equals preparedness.
Your Comment 4 says there are potentially a thousand things that have to be understood before design and engineering, and that merely buying something from a company doesn't establish that it is safe for the particular system you're building.
Then the food section essentially says:
You can own the greenhouse, trees, animals and seeds—but without the knowledge to operate them, you've still got a problem.
That's exactly the distinction you've been making tonight between information and the ability to reason with information.
4. And then there is your “build for your region” principle
This is one of the parts I'd preserve particularly carefully.
You aren't proposing:
“Build a nuclear bunker.”
You're proposing:
“Build a structure capable of surviving the ordinary disasters of the place where you actually live, which can also provide protection during an extraordinary disaster.”
That is a fundamentally different approach.
A bunker that survives nuclear fallout but gets destroyed by the region's ordinary flood, wildfire, tornado, hurricane, groundwater movement, or other environmental hazard isn't much of a survival system.
5. Your 2023 answer also reinforces something we've been discussing
The real enemy isn't necessarily the nuclear weapon.
It is system failure.
You have:
water
air
food
power
agriculture
sanitation
engineering
tools
knowledge
communications
people
skills
And every one of those can become a failure point.
That's why your old phrase:
“If you omit just one of those things ... Then you, your family and your friends will die.”
is rhetorically extreme, but it reveals how you're thinking about the problem:
survival is a system, not a room.
And that connects directly to your more recent five-year bunker discussion.
And now I see another progression
You've handed me three related Quora answers:
02 Sept 2022 — 4.5K views
How long until you can safely leave?
15 Sept 2023 — 4.5K views
How do I make a nuclear bunker?
18 Apr 2024 — later five-year bunker answer
How much would it cost for four people to survive five years?
That's almost a three-stage engineering problem:
When do we leave?
↓
How do we build the place?
↓
Can human beings actually live there for years?
And then your 2026 conversations add the fourth question:
After we survive, how do we become a civilization again?
That's the part I find most significant in the archive—not because every engineering assertion in these old answers is necessarily correct, but because the question you're asking keeps getting bigger.
You started with a shelter.
You're ending up thinking about a society.
me. Did I even answer the question?
😂 Ugh indeed, John.
You did answer it—but you answered “How do I make a nuclear bunker?” by explaining almost everything that has to be considered before, around, and after making one.
If I were the poor Quora reader asking for construction instructions, I'd probably get halfway through and think:
“John... I asked how to build the bunker.” 😂
Your actual construction answer is buried toward the end:
proper engineering
sufficient mass above the shelter
90° turns at entrances
sufficient mass around entrances
multiple doors
mud rooms
separate/isolated gas systems
ventilation/filtration
water
power
emergency access
So yes, you answered the question, but not in the conventional “here are the construction steps” manner.
And that's actually consistent with your opening:
“There are a thousand things that you must know well before you get to the design and engineering stage...”
You essentially answered:
“Before I tell you how to make a bunker, I need to explain why you shouldn't start by making a bunker.”
That's very John. 😆
But there is an important distinction for the archive:
As an answer to the literal Quora question:
Partial/direct answer.
As an answer to the question you apparently thought they should have asked:
Very extensive answer.
And I think that's why your Quora answers are interesting to study. You frequently take a narrow question and expand it into the system surrounding the question.
The danger is that the original question can get lost.
This one is a perfect example.
And I wouldn't rewrite it now. It's an archival piece. Let the 2023 John stand there in all his glory, yelling:
“NO GAS PRODUCTS IN ANY UNDERGROUND LIVING SPACE. PERIOD!!!”
while the poor person who asked “How do I make a bunker?” is still waiting for the blueprint. 😂
me. what question? lol. Of course leave it as is. I guess I missed that.I usually add things like expanding a crawl space or hardening a basement. Or build an underground one piece concrete monolithic dome home. (Yes, I know redundant). Or the Atlas Survival Shelters company in Texas.
😂 Exactly! “What question?” is the proper response.
You did answer it. You just took the scenic route through the entire civilization-collapse problem before getting around to the bunker.
And yes, now that you remind me of the other things you normally include, I can see what happened. Your mental outline was probably something like:
Existing structure
→ expand/harden crawl space
→ harden basement
→ build a dedicated underground structure
→ monolithic concrete dome
→ commercial shelter systems
→ then start worrying about air, water, power, food, etc.
And “one-piece concrete monolithic dome home” is technically redundant in wording, but I understand exactly what you mean. You're emphasizing the structural concept rather than merely saying “concrete house.”
The interesting thing is that your 2023 answer contains the principles but apparently not the more familiar menu of practical approaches you usually give readers.
And Atlas Survival Shelters in Texas fits naturally into that menu as a commercial option rather than something you're personally designing.
So I wouldn't touch the old answer. It's actually useful to discover that you thought you had answered the construction question completely and then, four years later, realized you had wandered off into civilization engineering. 😂
That's precisely why leaving these things unedited is valuable.
The archive gets to show:
John, 2023: “How do I make a nuclear bunker?”
John: “First, let me explain agriculture, preindustrial skills, water tables, power systems, air filtration, civilization collapse, and why gas appliances will kill you.”
Questioner: “...but the bunker?”
John: “Oh yeah. 90-degree entrances.” 😂
And honestly, the fact that you normally include crawl-space expansion, basement hardening, underground construction, monolithic structures, and commercial shelters makes the omission itself interesting.
You simply went system-level that day.
me.
