Life inside a nuclear missile silo

http://www.theverge.com/culture/2011/11/1/2525857/2012-survival-condo-at-the-end-of-the-world

by ClifReeder • 15 years ago

58 13 15 years ago

fleitz• 15 years ago

Looks cool, but not buying into the whole every family needs a "compound" theory.

The part in the video about the idea of the earth getting closer to the galactic centre is hilarious. I don't think the speaker has any concept of the relative speed at which we're heading to the galactic centre, collision with Andromeda will happen first, and even that should likely be a non-event. By the time the Sun reaches the galatic core it will have long since burned out.

alexqgb• 15 years ago

Indeed. It's funny hearing definitive statements about global warming ("I don't think carbon has anything to do with it") followed by an inadvertent but total admission of scientific illiteracy.

dmm2• 15 years ago

> the idea that soon oil will run out, bringing about the end of society as we know it

That's not what peak oil means. The oil will never "run out". In a hundred years we will still be pumping oil out of Saudi Arabia.

A person can be surrounded by a whole world of air and still suffocate if their lungs are inflamed and full of fluid. A person is doomed if the effort of drawing a breath consumes more oxygen than derived from that breath.

Likewise it doesn't matter how many barrels of oil are in the ground or under the sea if producing a barrel of oil takes more energy than can be derived from that oil. It doesn't matter how many acres are covered in tar sands if the facilities to convert those sands to oil aren't built.

That said, the people in this article are crazy.

blake8086• 15 years ago

I wouldn't be so sure.

I think one day we'll see oil wells with vast temporary solar arrays deployed next to them pumping oil for the millions of gas and diesel-burning engines that are still in the wild.

We'll be spending 10 barrels worth of energy to get a barrel of oil because there's so much infrastructure investment in oil.

dmm2• 15 years ago

There is a lot of interesting analysis regarding possible responses to declining oil production. If you respond to a 3% decline in production by building infrastructure to produce energy by other means, you only deepen the energy deficit because that infrastructure takes energy to build.

Check out this article: http://www.theoildrum.com/node/8526

You might right though. Sperm whale oil is still used to lubricate satellites.

socillion• 15 years ago

An interesting and vaguely related article on the psychology of what happens to believers when nothing happens:

http://healthland.time.com/2011/05/17/apocalypse-now-why-bel...

Ahmes• 15 years ago

There is a fascinating documentary/long-form article in VICE about another Nike missile silo in Kansas that was backed by a VC and fronted as Y2K fallout shelter/precision spring manufacturing facility for NASA but was in fact producing kilos of MDMA and analogue chemicals.[1]

One of the guys behind the operation, Leonard Pickard, was formally convicted of producing 200,000 doses of LSD in an industrial facility in Mountain View.[2]

Interestingly, the facility in Kansas was turned into an even more luxurious living abode than the hypothetical ones presented here. Think Scarface.

[1] http://www.vice.com/hamiltons-pharmacopeia/getting-high-on-k... (Scroll down)

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Leonard_Pickard

xradionut• 15 years ago

There's a fortress mentality amoung many of the wealthy I know. Beyond gated communities and personal self defense it has extending to overly secure homes outside of major cities or secondary homes in other countries. Many of them think of it as "insurance" just in case the economic poop hits the fan and there's a more agressive backlash than OWS.

mrbgty• 15 years ago

The bunkers are cool structures.

The people in the video are crazy.

jessriedel• 15 years ago

Economist Robin Hanson has a lot of interesting stuff to say about the economics of existential risk, and how we might use refuges as payouts in prediction markets which forecast the end of the world.

http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/07/refuge-markets.html

Andi• 15 years ago

I cannot imagine to live in a house without (direct) sunlight.

jplewicke• 15 years ago

My major concern with using a former nuclear missile silo would be that it's hard to know whether Russia's intelligence service knows that it's been deactivated. The odds of of a nuclear exchange with Russia are low, but I'd prefer to know that my fallout shelter might not be targeted for a direct hit with an ICBM.

Life inside a nuclear missile silo

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