Demand for at-home bomb shelters is surging
North Korean threats spark sales
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Six years ago, when Seth and Jill Brokenbek decided to buy their home on Evergreen Drive in Murrysville, Mr. Brokenbek said he first wanted “to check out the hole,” referring to a small doorway protruding from a hillside by the driveway.
With a flashlight in hand, he cleared dirt away then crouched through the 2-by2½-foot door and stepped down into 2-foot-wide hallway, After a few steps, it turned right and down a ramp to an 11-by-23-foot underground room.
Floors are reinforced concrete. Walls are cinder block. The ceiling is now rusting steel supported by an Ibeam. It’s equipped with electricity, sewage pipes, a faucet and closed-off air-vent pipes.
Mr. Brokenbek, 36, soon realized he was standing in a 1960s-era Cuban Missile Crisis shelter. “Really cool and pointless,” he said. “A monumental waste of money.”
“Everyone has an idea of what to do with it,” he said. A friend suggested setting up chairs inside with a movie screen and showing his buddies World War II movies. A wine cellar? A hiding place?
“It’s useless to me,” he said. “It’s an oddity. Bizarre. I can tell people I have a bunker. If I had the money I’d tear out the whole hillside and put in a garage.”
Such structures actually are expensive ways to provide peace of mind and a sense of security. That trend continues today with seven or eight companies nationwide building underground shelters for protection against tornadoes, nuclear attacks or civil war, with demand waxing and waning based on foreign threats and domestic unrest.
“In our world of political and economical conflict it’s only natural for people to think of the worst that can happen and a way to survive,” the website for Bomb Shelter Builders states, noting its shelters are bulletand grenade-proof. “If you want to make sure that you and your family are going to be safe from eventual attacks or massive civil war, then going with a bomb shelter that can be custom built right under your front or backyard, might be the best investment to make at this time.”
Gary Lynch, general manager of the Rising S Co., a Dallas-based firm that describes itself as the country’s largest shelter builder, says North Korean threats continue to raise demand, with his company building up to 300 per year worldwide at an average cost of $125,000.
And since the company was formed in 2003, it has constructed 20 shelters in Western Pennsylvania, with four in the Greater Pittsburgh area.
They can range from $45,000 for a shelter to accommodate two to three people, to ones costing millions, “depending on the amenities you want,” Mr. Lynch said.
“The reckless speech between North Korea and the United States,” he said, has created anxiety, leading people to evaluate their circumstances and consider the probability of attack.
From 1956 until the end of the Cold War, with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, industry historians estimate that 250,000 to 300,000 private shelters, including the Brokenbeks’, were built, Mr. Lynch said.
The Murrysville shelter apparently was built by then-homeowner William S. Condon, who earned a doctorate in psychology from the University of Pittsburgh before heading to Boston, where he did notable research on human interactions. Neither he nor a family member could be located.
Threats from Iran, Russia and especially North Korea all generate demand for shelters, with Rising S having shipped 200 modular shelters to Japan in the past year, Mr. Lynch said.
Nowadays, people typically build shelters as extensions of their homes, he said, for use as man caves or places where relatives can stay or grandchildren can play. Unlike the 1960s shelters, he said, “you want to use the space rather than lock it up for 20 years.”