Let me explain. I've always been fascinated with underground shelters ever since I was a child. I even dug a 10 x 10 hole and covered the top with wood to make a clubhouse with my friends in elementary/middle school. A few months ago my friend (one of the ones who helped me with the "clubhouse") and I were talking about possible ways the world might take a turn for the worse and we got to talking about underground shelters. We spent hours discussing the most extreme cases and as we did I decided it would be fun to design an extended stay shelter. And when I say extend, I mean extended. I ended up designing a pretty expansive shelter with enough storage space to last around 100 years with four people living inside.
100 years? I know what you're thinking, that's a long time and nobody will ever need to stay in hiding for so long. I know this, but I still really enjoy designing the shelter and problem solving the foreseeable problems that may arise. The shelter was actually designed with the idea that once whatever "happened" to cause the use of the shelter occurred, the subjects inside would not leave unless absolutely necessary. Which of course means the "shelter" had become a "home" of sorts, in theory of course.
There are, however, situations where this kind of shelter may be necessary and I will briefly go over some of these for those that need a real world application to take this kind of speculation seriously. Feel free to skip this paragraph if you are not one of those people. One situation is world famine. A few ways this could occur is extinction/extreme declination in bee populations, global warming, or by the simple exponential rate that the world's population is rising. This would cause a lack of food that may create civil disruptions or war and would certainly cause mass starvation. A hidden shelter stocked with food would then become a nice asset to have, especially considering the fact that many people would forcible take the supplies if it wasn't hidden (underground). Another situation that may occur is a super virus/infectious disease. With antibiotics being prescribed for trivial things, bacteria are acquiring drug resistances at an alarming rate. If something were to evolve that we had no way to vaccinate against or cure, there would be massive death. Think the Spanish flu on a larger level (killed 50-100 million people in 1918). This would create a situation where total biological isolation would be very beneficial. There are more situations that I've thought of, but you get the idea.
However you look at it, know that this is mostly a hypothetical and I don't particularly care to hear naysayer over the whole idea unless there's a fundamental fact that I may have overlooked that would effectively ruin my project. I will, of course, take constructive criticism over the general idea or any aspect of the plan. Perhaps in years to come some rich person may utilize my designs as their backup.
In response to Gazrok, all of those questions have been considered and are effectively solved in my plan, and your insight on the immune system's "memory" so to speak helped to alleviate the concerns I had, so I thank you greatly!
If anybody is interested in specifics of my plans, I'll make a forum post with everything I have for critiquing by the experts (you guys).
Also, I've been looking at a few other posts on here and I'm really enjoying reading about other people's ideas and seeing what they've accomplished.
(EDIT) Looking back at this I realize it may come off a bit rude when saying I don't want any naysayers etc. All I meant by all that was that I would prefer constructive criticism over people just shooting the whole idea down as unrealistic, but always feel free to voice any concerns. Thanks for all the replies1
Jason
