Thursday, July 29, 2010

Collective bargaining for post-apocalypse cannibal zombies assured.


So, this morning Drudge features this story in USA Today entitled "Doomsday shelters making a comeback."

Here's the opener that drew my attention:

Jason Hodge, father of four children from Barstow, Calif., says he's "not paranoid" but he is concerned, and that's why he bought space in what might be labeled a doomsday shelter.

Hodge bought into the first of a proposed nationwide group of 20 fortified, underground shelters — the Vivos shelter network — that are intended to protect those inside for up to a year from catastrophes such as a nuclear attack, killer asteroids or tsunamis, according to the project's developers.

"It's an investment in life," says Hodge, a Teamsters union representative. "I want to make sure I have a place I can take me and my family if that worst-case scenario were to happen."


Great, it will be The End of the World as We Know It but we can rest assured that collective bargaining for post-apocalypse cannibal zombies will be secured.

March 12, 2018: "Shop steward Frank Munchlunch chats with International Industrial Zombie & Restaurant Workers Local 1315 President Art Floogle about new work rules."

10 comments:

pdxr13 said...

One interesting angle on shelters using the "lifeboat" system of governance is that your status as a "paying passenger" may not protect you from the "crew" or "command" of such lifeboat when recourse to external law and order is unavailable. The rules of the lifeboat shelter frequently require that all assets (food, tools, materials) be deposited into the common pool and personal weapons will be secured in the Armory.

I like the Radius Engineering smaller fiberglass designs for strength and waterproofness. It's a lot like a buried fiberglas sailboat (freakishly strong against shear/twist/compression, in 3-D), and less like a hole lined with cinderblocks or a shipping container waterproofed and dropped into a hole/mounded-over. Upgrades include multiple tunnel accesses, decon chambers, buried generators, etc.

Against radiation, structures generally don't protect. MASS protects best, with distance a second consideration. For the exact protection factor, consult the reference books, but it involves Yards of soil depth, Feet of concrete or inches of lead sheeting to get the protection factor of -40dB, which will allow everyone inside to survive the initial 60 days after a nearby detonation.

IMHO, nowhere in SoCal is a suitable place for "survival" before or after an event requiring a shelter. Robert Heinlein had the best advice for atomic warfare "Don't be there when it goes off".

Cheers.

Anonymous said...

I've noticed that most of the commercial group shelters are gun free zones. I wonder what their security arrangements are?

In a full blown TEOTWAWKI situation, some of these place could be described as "Spam in a can".

I may be detecting a odd sort of reverse natural selection going on here. Rather silence of the lambs, we have congregation of the sheep.

Or do my meds need adjusted again?

8-)

-Bubba Man (One of the Bubbas of the Apocalypse).

Anonymous said...

Unless one is very close to one of these shelters that they buy into, there's no guarantee they will get there befor ethe door closes.

When this article aired, one guy who was buying in said he lived 150+ miles away. An awful lot can happen in 150 miles of back country.

These people also don't realize, they'll have to come out sometime too.

Its a sucker's game.

Dedicated_Dad said...

Such "communities" are only for the wealthy -- unlike ours, which are usually formed by merit.

Go figure...

Am I the only one who can see this bag of pus being lynched by the rest of his shelter-mates when they figure out he's part of one of the biggest reasons we're in such a mess in the first place?

I'd pay to watch that, actually....

DD

Female III said...

Anonymous aka Bubba Man, would you expound further on your thoughts please? I would like to hear more. Thank you.

Son of Sam Adams said...

Not to worry. Either the crisis will turn him into a human being, or he'll act true to form and get more than he collectively bargained for. Lead may stop radiation, but radiation doesn't stop lead.

Anonymous said...

Actually, I was thinking the same thing Bubba wrote. You have a bunch of terrified wealthy people with no applicable post-SHTF skills congregating into one small place with everything the wolves need.

I'm not a wolf, but I'm not going to lock myself in a little room with 50 strangers beating each other to death with #10 cans while hungry people make IEDs outside to blow their way in.

Anonymous said...

"One interesting angle on shelters using the "lifeboat" system of governance is that your status as a "paying passenger" may not protect you from the "crew" or "command" of such lifeboat when recourse to external law and order is unavailable. The rules of the lifeboat shelter frequently require that all assets (food, tools, materials) be deposited into the common pool and personal weapons will be secured in the Armory."

Communist government with a monopoly on force, weapons, and rules is a disaster for those who want to be protected. This is true whether the lifeboat contains 4 or 400 million.

Anonymous said...

Female III

In a nut shell, the point of my comments was that in a well stocked shelter that has a large (relatively) population of untrained, unarmed folk, they will be at the mercy of roving gangs of MZBs (Mutant Zombie Bikers, a term of art in the prep world) or if they have a internal private security force, they will intern be at the mercy of the good will and professionalism of their private security force.

In either case, they run the risk of being 'Spam In A Can' (or 'Thresh in a can' OK, I read to much John Ringo) or to speak more plainly, a conveniently packaged, high density source of resources.
Their food, their cloths, their women and children, their own bodies.

Do I need to expound further?

In any case, I would feel *MUCH* better in a smaller shelter maintained with a small (a few families at most) of people I know and trust where we are all a mutually supportive defense group rather than a commercial buy in shelter.

Heck! I have enough trouble with the home-owners association! 8-)

-Bubba Man (One of the Bubbas of the Apocalypse).

Mattexian said...

Kinda reminds me of the "arks" in the movie "2012", filled with a bunch of the world's billionaires and political elites and scientists, and their coolies (that is the term to describe Chinese slave laborers, isn't it?). Sorry, not interested.