The world was a very different place during the Cold War between the United States and the U.S.S.R.. I mean, when something called the The Doomsday Clock is created because tensions between world powers are so high, you know the world is a messed up place. People around the world were forced to live in a constant state of anticipation and fear. Could this be the day that tensions finally boil over and disaster strikes the world? How will I survive if nuclear war engulfs the entire planet? These are the questions people were forced to ask themselves on a daily basis. While many people just tried to live their daily lives as best as they could, others got proactive about maintaining their survival. One of those people is a man named Bruce Beach, and what he has been building since the 80’s is like walking into a time machine. You gotta check this place out!
Bruce Beach decided he wanted to be prepared in case of a nuclear disaster, so he started building his own nuclear fallout shelter in the small Canadian village of Horning’s Mill located just North of Toronto.
The whole facility is 10,000 square feet. It can hold upwards of 500 people. It has enough food to sustain those 500 people for enough time until the radiation from nuclear warfare has cleared enough for humans to be able to inhabit the surface again.
Beach created his bunker in a unique way. He took the frames from 42 school buses and poured concrete over them to create the interior of the shelter.
This place really has everything you need to survive a nuclear strike. It has two commercial sized kitchens, a full plumbing system, a private well and septic tank, radio room, chapel and even a decontamination room.
The whole place is powered by daisy chained diesel generators and is considered to be virtually impenetrable by anything other than a direct nuclear strike. It even has a deployable antenna that can send radio waves across all of North America.
So you may be wondering at this point how you can save yourself a spot in this impenetrable fallout shelter.
Fortunately money isn’t your obstacle. Beach has said he wouldn’t charge people for a space in the shelter. In exchange for a space, he wants “sweat equity” and people who are in the shelter to be actively involved in the Ark’s community activities. If you live near the shelter you have a good chance of getting a spot.
Beach has said that he expects most of the shelters occupants to be children. He envisions it as an almost underground orphanage, allowing children to live through the apocalypse.
Kids are definitely going to have to get used to eating their vegetables down here.
Bruce has recently become critical of the modern-day “prepper” movement.
Beach feels that people are too concerned with their own person survival these days, and not the rebuilding of our society.
Now I know it’s for the survival of the human race, but being locked underground with hundreds of children wouldn’t be my ideal post apocalypse situation. That may actually be worse than the apocalypse itself. You have to admire Beach for thinking about other people and children though. Not many people would be willing to house people for free who they don’t even know. So if the day ever comes where you need to know the safest place from a nuclear disaster, Horning’s Mill is probably your best bet at survival.