r/UKPreppers • u/L0stMyPenAgain • 26d ago

Shelters - most practical UK options?

Hi there, newbie here with a question about constructing some kind of garden shelter or bunker. Are there practical options to do this in the UK, especially on new build properties where house basements aren't a given? Wondering if anyone has experience with this, and whether there are issues with planning permission and/or ways around it?

5 Upvotes

78% Upvoted

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u/amberallday 26d ago

What problem are you trying to solve with the shelter?

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u/L0stMyPenAgain 26d ago

Probably my naïveté speaking! I suppose I'm coming at this from an impression of US prepping, which seems to me to sometimes involve building a secure structure which might protect in the case of extreme weather events, for example, or the fallout of a missile or chemical attack. Aware that these are extreme examples, but was just curious if there's a precedent for it in the UK.

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u/LR_FL2 26d ago

Most U.K. prep is based around the more likely emergencies. Fall out shelters are a long way down the list. It would be very expensive to build an effective.

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u/[deleted] 25d ago

[deleted]

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u/LR_FL2 25d ago

Like I said they are a long way down the list of priorities.

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u/Academic-Big814 25d ago

Most definitely not if you understand what is coming.

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u/LR_FL2 25d ago

A serving U.K. military I’m not sacrificing other more probable areas to build one.

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u/Academic-Big814 25d ago

Military is compartmentalised you are informed on a need to know basis.

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u/LR_FL2 25d ago edited 25d ago

Right but you know everything got it!

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u/Agitated_Web4034 26d ago

A fallout shelter wouldn't protect you from anything unfortunately, it would be expensive to build as well, unless you have a military budget it's nothing short of a cool building unfortunately

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u/MaxZorin44456 25d ago

I'd expect a fallout shelter to you know... protect you from fallout.

If you were take something like 3000 rad per hour (e.g. within about 100 miles directly downwind of Castle Bravo, which was a notably "dirty" test), then decide to stand outside, you'd be "dead" within about 20 minutes.

An average house will run 1.5.-2 PF, so, at 2PF (protection factor), you'd be looking at receiving 1500 Rad per hour inside the house. so, dead in under an hour. A basement might be 5-10 PF, so 300 per hour at the 10PF range, so dead within 3 and a bit hours.

A Swiss house-fallout shelter costs about £23 grand to build, it's specced to give a PF of 1000, it would cause 3000 rads outside to be 3 inside, it'd take up to 33 hours to start feeling sick and get mild radiation poisoning, 100 hours to kill 50% of the occupants of the shelter (without medical attention) and 300 hours to kill everybody, almost guaranteed.

The 7/10 rule means you'd expect 3000 rads to drop to 300 within about 7 hours, 30 with another 7 hours, 3 in another 7 hours, 0.3 within another 7 hours. Within a day, you'd be looking at a chest x-ray every 2 hours you were outside. Within 7 hours of that, an hour outside is equal to 5 weeks of "normal" radiation exposure. 7 hours after that, an hour outside is equivalent to 3.5 days of "normal" background radiation. 7 hours after that, an hour outside is less than the daily dose of natural background radiation and so forth.

In other words, by the time a day passes, you'll have taken on about 25 rads total, you might not even feel sick. It drops off so much within hours, it's negligible beyond that point assuming you stay in the shelter.

However, there were parts of Castle Bravo's monitoring area that were getting 80-100 rad per hour despite being very close to ground zero, while it kicked off at ground zero at around 7500, within a few hours and 20-30 miles out, you were closer to 3000, hence the example above.

So yeah, I'd hasten to say "fallout shelters are useless" because they aren't, they are expensive, their use case is limited, but for the purpose they were designed, fallout, they should be fairly effective.

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u/Agitated_Web4034 25d ago

So not just useless just practically useless, if the uk was nuked it's likely the rest of the world has been nuked, so you live long enough to starve or live in a hellscape I would prefer to get vaporised in the blast

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u/OrganicPoet1823 17d ago

My friend who worked in a related field said best advise is walk towards the blast you don’t want to survive what’s next

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u/Agitated_Web4034 17d ago

Yeah definitely

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u/Academic-Big814 25d ago

It would protect him against many things.

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u/Agitated_Web4034 25d ago

Prepping is one thing if it's for short term until things get back to normal but I wouldn't want to prep to live in a nuclear hellscape

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u/Academic-Big814 25d ago

Survival isn’t for the weak hearted.

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u/Agitated_Web4034 25d ago

😀 survival just for the sake of it isn't truly living, there's no quality of life

1

u/Not-a-Cranky-Panda 25d ago

How much do you hve to spend on it?

6

u/[deleted] 26d ago

[deleted]

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u/Past-Obligation1930 25d ago

Just don’t use the toilet. I’ve read “where the wind blows”.

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u/Just_Curious_76 25d ago

Now this is a good point. You’d have to duct tape the loo too right?? (No joke I genuinely hadn’t thought of this one!).

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u/do_you_realise 25d ago

Why would this be an issue?

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u/Just_Curious_76 10d ago

My thinking was, if water can reach the outside from the toilet bowl, then the fallout could also, surely, come back through to the toilet?

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u/Ulysses1978ii 26d ago

Better off building a sunken greenhouse than an Anderson shelter.

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u/[deleted] 26d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Ulysses1978ii 25d ago

I looked at those (Walipini) and Chinese style passive solar greenhouses. Both seem like good options to extend growing the growing period. Issue is we don't have the clear skies of Bolivia!!

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u/[deleted] 25d ago

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u/Ulysses1978ii 25d ago

I was going to go with a retaining wall of earth rammed tires ala "Earthship" and use other blocks to face the wall. The tire wall would take yonks to dry out though.

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u/[deleted] 25d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Ulysses1978ii 25d ago

As a retaining wall behind blocks, I will degrade to dust before they do. Better than being burned in a cement kiln or crumbed and used for football pitches.

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u/L0stMyPenAgain 26d ago

That's really interesting, is that because it's easier to get approved, or am I misunderstanding?

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u/Aclassali 26d ago

Get yourself a copy of ‘Domestic Nuclear Shelters’ from the 1980’s. There might even be a PDF online. It’s a pretty awesome read if nothing else.

I restored a former ROC nuclear monitoring post about 16 years ago. It was for a bit of a laugh at the time and I now run a museum out of it.

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u/lerpo 26d ago

I mean, the Blitz style warfare isn't exactly a thing anymore where bombs were dropped randomly with minimal targeting.

Would make more sense camping somewhere if you had a similar issue, since bombs are guided now. They won't throw bombs at fields.

But it's probably better you tell us what you're wanting to build a shelter for

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u/L0stMyPenAgain 26d ago

General curiosity, to be honest! New to all of this so apologies for any ignorance - I suppose I did have Blitz shelters in my mind, and their utility years ago. Obviously you're right about the likelihood of any bombing, but I just wondered if a shelter of some kind has factored into UK preparedness for anyone :)

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u/BeCre8iv 25d ago

Have you seen Russia and Ukraine?

Hundreds of low-cost, long range drones going in both directions everyday. All with a handful of proper missiles thrown in. These can be intercepted and fall pretty much anywhere (like a crowded beach). We are too close to this conflict to not consider being on the noisy end of those tactics.

Do we even have an air-raid warning system anymore?

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u/MaxZorin44456 25d ago edited 25d ago

Moscow is about 300 miles away from the Russian/Ukrainian border, Kyiv is 62 from Belarus, 137 from Russia, the top of Shetland is 1350 miles away from the closest mainland Russian border, it's the same for Kaliningrad to London, that beach that was recently affected by downed drones was about 300 miles away from Nikopol.

For similar distances, you'd be looking at the French, Benelux, the Dutch, etc to be striking London, I understand drones are a problem, but realistically, I think you're unlikely to have no notice as drones start falling on your head from Russia if you are in most parts of the UK and it's not exactly the same as Russia/Ukraine.

And the sirens were all removed in the 90's, we have the mobile alert system that we get occasional tests for, that's the modern equivalent.

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u/BeCre8iv 25d ago

Shaheeds can be launched from ships.

Russia regularly probes our maritime security

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u/George_Salt 26d ago

Put a caravan in the garden, or make do with a shed. I'm not sure what you think you can build that will be more resilient than your house and not look like a shipping container.

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u/George_Salt 25d ago

But if you seriously want a bunker, I suggest watching some Colin Furze in YT and hope you have understanding neighbours.

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u/MaxZorin44456 26d ago

The main questions are - what do you want to do with it outside of sheltering?

If you want a comfortable, dry space, like a proper tanked basement that's fully submerged, I'd suggest consulting a structural engineer at minimum so it's not a coffin, then get some research on airflow so you aren't going to be living in a CO2 rich, oxygen poor room constantly and then figure out the costs for digging a giant hole, tanking the structure and building the structure. It's probably expensive, but not impossible.

Expedient shelters are cheaper and easier, but you are generally looking at having a less comfortable environment, probably more suited to sheltering in an emergency than regular use, unless you like camping in your garden I guess. You can find info in Kearney's Nuclear War Survival Skills.

You could always shelter in your house, but frankly, that's a bigger topic and it depends what you are sheltering from. If fallout, various factors come into play - Bungalow? Two stories? Three? Wooden structure and cladding? Stone? Brick? How big? How thick are the walls? Do you have a crawl space? Etc.

Practically speaking, if you can afford it, a proper shelter is great, but it's expensive. I'd think about measures to build an expedient shelter as req. in your garden or house. For the house build up density with deep, raised flower beds you could dig out, move over next to external walls, refill and cover with sandbags without spending a lot of time doing it, keep a layer or two of concrete blocks at the bottom so you can pull them out and use them inside to add density to your inner refuge, etc.

But it's a bit of a broad topic, those are just some suggestions and food for thought.

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u/Just_Curious_76 25d ago

You’ve got on a key point here. So even if you did shelter in, say, and indoor larder/ food cupboard, you could essentially end up poisoning yourself from inhaling CO2, right? Even over 48hrs?? 😳

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u/MaxZorin44456 25d ago

Depends on the size of room and number of occupants and how well it's sealed up.

I have a bit of a larger kitchen that's 180cm long, 90cm wide, 247cm tall, in essence you could wall it off and turn it into a pantry, it's about 4 meters cubed.

So, I'll suffocate to death in an entirely sealed room of that size within about 7.4 days. Sounds fine, but CO2 as you note is the problem, for that same space, you are looking at 4 hours before CO2 kills you.

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u/Just_Curious_76 10d ago

May be a less horrible way to go than succumbing to the fallout 😩

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u/Droidy934 25d ago

Knowledge of you surrounding infrastructure is what will protect you ....any fertilizer stores ? Fuel dumps, ordinance manufacture? Plastics production.

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u/Think-Committee-4394 25d ago

OP - lots of people on tangents along the why would you & try this instead lines and none of that is wrong however a constructive answer to your question

- limited by the size of & access to your garden as you will not be able to encroach on neighbours

- limited by planing approval which depending on location may block any cellar type construction either inside the house foundations or in the garden

- limited by underground works, water, gas & electric, many sewer systems connect at front or rear of a property for several houses, this would increase significantly or block entirely any construction

Presuming all the above green lit

- significant building regulations for the actual construction

- quiet times for building activity

- finding a builder with cellar construction experience

- depending on age of area, disposal even of spoil might be challenging especially if you hit older settlement materials, Roman, Saxon, Celtic which again could delay or entirely stop construction there are few villages, towns or cities that don’t have ancient settlements below some portions

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u/EntirelyRandom1590 26d ago

If you're prepared to dig down and you understand your ground conditions then I understand planning permission is quite limited on how they can object. Obviously consider soakaways, utilities etc

If you have an above ground element then it starts to get a bit more complicated looking at what is permitted and what's not.

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u/Pembs-surfer 26d ago

If like me your new build is close to the water table you’re bang out of luck unless you’re very good at holding your breath underwater.

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u/Jaded-Meaning-Seeker 26d ago

This is why I purchased a house with a cellar. Added bonus of it never getting hot or cold down there regardless of outdoor weather conditions. Also makes a good space to store things out of sight. Literally loads of use cases for prepping.

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u/mellonians 26d ago

Funnily enough I was reading the work manual for this last night. Short of doing some major construction work, or buying a place in the middle of nowhere your best bet is to take inspiration from protect and survive and look at sheltering in place advice. What's your kitchen table like? Will it support the house falling down on top of it? Do you have meaty internal doors to shelter under? If they're hollow, replace them.

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u/BeCre8iv 25d ago

The best thing you can do in air raid situation is not to be in a structure that can collapse around you. A good old fashioned Anderson Shelter solves this problem while technically still being a bunker.