Nuclear Bunkers Are Growing in Popularity Even Though They’re Basically Useless

Either the world is becoming an increasingly more dangerous place or our 24/7 access to worldwide news is just making it seem that way. Either way, we are living in a time of high anxiety. There’s no better demonstration of this than the fact nuclear bunkers are selling like hotcakes right now, even though they’re completely useless at the one thing they’re supposed to do.

There are wars all over the place, weapon sales are skyrocketing, Russia is loosening its rules on the use of nuclear weapons—it’s enough to drive people with way too much money insane. So insane that they fork over huge sums of cash for protection against nuclear fallout.

The problem is, according to FEMA, the government agency that specializes in disaster relief, nuclear bunkers provide a false sense of security because everyone involved in the nuclear bunker process, from the manufacturers to the very rich people buying them, underestimates just how devastating a nuclear blast could be.

When people buy themselves a fallout shelter, they think they’re getting the Vaults from the Fallout video game series — sprawling underground cities lined with thick layers of concrete buried deep within the earth, away from all the radiation and mutated marauders.

The truth, however, is that even the best commercially available nuclear shelters offer about the same protection as your home. Your little bunker will wind up performing just as well as the basement already beneath your home.

This reality hasn’t stemmed the tide of extremely panicked people forking over small fortunes for fallout shelters. The market is expected to grow from $137 million to $175 million by 2030.

If you find yourself in this camp, maybe listen to Alecia Sanders-Zarke from the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, who said: “Bunkers are, in fact, not a tool to survive a nuclear war, but a tool to allow a population to psychologically endure the possibility of a nuclear war,” per AP News.

She makes an important distinction. Fallout shelters will do fuck-all in both the short and long term of a real-life nuclear detonation. The safest a person with a nuclear bunker will feel is in the lead-up to the explosion, when they are wrapped in the safety and security of the knowledge that they have a thing that will save them even if it actually won’t at all—a fact a lot of them will actively ignore.