WAR FUNG ADVISORY: Israel Getting Ready for War: Do We Have Public Shelters Here in CONUS?

Haifa drafts plans for national emergency
Municipality aims to use Carmel Tunnels as public bomb shelters, manage city from massive command center
By Ilan Ben Zion August 20, 2012, 9:39 am

One of the Carmel Tunnels in Haifa, prior to its opening in 2010. (photo credit: Shay Levy/Flash90)



http://www.timesofisrael.com/haifa-drafts-plans-for-national-emergency/

The northern city of Haifa has drafted citywide emergency wartime procedures, including the use of its highway tunnels as mass bomb shelters, Army Radio reported on Monday.

In the case of an attack, the municipality would be managed from its recently constructed 600 square meters (6,458 sq. feet), NIS 3 million command center. All municipal authorities responsible for emergency response and disaster management would be situated in the city’s nerve center.

The Carmel Tunnels, completed two years ago, run a total of 6.5 kilometers (4 miles) through Mount Carmel, directly beneath the city of Haifa. Their central location and situation beneath the mountain make them an ideal shelter against rocket and missile attacks on Israel’s northern port city. Haifa sustained multiple rocket attacks by Hezbollah during the 2006 Second Lebanon War.

Haifa Mayor Yona Yahav has worked to turn blueprints for using the subterranean roadways as shelters that have existed since before their construction into a practical solution. He reportedly requested the Home Front Command and National Emergency Authority approve their conversion into emergency refuge, and to allot space outside their portals for mass parking lots for incoming residents.

Yahav also asked the Industry, Trade and Labor Ministry and Transportation Ministry to declare the tunnels an essential wartime industry, in order to prevent under-staffing that would likely cause their closure.

The tunnels are critical transit arteries that cut travel time across the city from 30-50 minutes to six minutes during peak hours.

More radically, the mayor’s plan aims to prevent certain businesses — particularly pharmacies — from closing and preventing the public from accessing essential commodities during a national emergency. City Hall reportedly mapped out the city’s businesses and intends to instruct its owners to remain open. The municipality was investigating the possibility of commandeering stores whose owners who refuse, but it was unclear whether the move was legally feasible.

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Will we be required merely to 'duck and cover'.? Does the U.S. have any contingency plans for the survival of their huge populace?

I'm just wondering, since I'm not hearing anything coming out of TPTB.


If and when the radio blares with a warning here in CONUS , what will they recommend? I'm confused, please help me here.

The silence that I'm hearing is very, very scary.

This thread really isn't about Israel....it's about the U.S. What preps have been made for the populace here, just in case? Can we depend on FEMA(dumb question I know, but I'm putting it out there anyway) This thread is open ended, so discuss anything that has to do with how we will cope with a national emergency.

NOTE: The reason I posted this thread is basically because I'm very curious as to what government programs will be available.


NOTE2: I have the sneaking suspicion that in case of emergency we will be on our own. Of course, that's just me. There are lots of military and ex-military that are members here.
Chime in please, and tell us 'the plan'.

NOTE3: Since we are involved in several wars, it does make sense that contingency plans for our population would be necessary. Listening to those plans while listening to a radio
program (after the fact), however, is not the proper way to go, IMHO.

doctor_fungcool said:

This thread really isn't about Israel....it's about the U.S. What preps have been made for the populace here, just in case? Can we depend on FEMA(dumb question I know, but I'm putting it out there anyway) This thread is open ended, so discuss anything that has to do with how we cope with a national emergency.

NOTE: The reason I posted this thread is basically because I'm very curious as to what government programs will be available.

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My opinion? Even though I'm up in Canada? Don't depend on FEMA... just look at what happened with Katrina... depend on yourselves only.. and the Lord...

If you plan on depending on the Government for your safety, then your screwed. FEMA is only a money pit, and does not have the welfare of the common man as their concern. Make your own plans and have the means to carry them out, and the Lord had should be a part of that plan to help you get though what is coming.

doctor_fungcool said:

This thread really isn't about Israel....it's about the U.S. What preps have been made for the populace here,

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What you mean apart from all the ammo purchases by various govt bodies and the exec orders from O that they can take all your preps

They're very quiet about it, but the old Civil Defense organization is still around. In theory, all those old fallout shelters (at least the ones that are still marked) are still legitimate shelters, and could be activated. Also, although no one has much confidence in FEMA, remember that they were ready ahead of time to help with Katrina, and were stymied by the incompetence of the governor and the chocolate mayor. They've got plans on file, though probably never rehearsed beyond table-top scenarios, for dealing with actual military attacks on US soil. Expect to see a lot of public schools and universities turned into shelters, and lots of half-assed evacuation plans put into action (which will promptly be swamped by the civilian populace doing whatever the hell they want anyway).

Marthanoir said:

What you mean apart from all the ammo purchases by various govt bodies and the exec orders from O that they can take all your preps

Click to expand...

Ah, so they do have a plan. Kewl.(sarcasm off)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgAkxVxo9MU

The Mountain said:

They're very quiet about it, but the old Civil Defense organization is still around. In theory, all those old fallout shelters (at least the ones that are still marked) are still legitimate shelters, and could be activated. Also, although no one has much confidence in FEMA, remember that they were ready ahead of time to help with Katrina, and were stymied by the incompetence of the governor and the chocolate mayor. They've got plans on file, though probably never rehearsed beyond table-top scenarios, for dealing with actual military attacks on US soil. Expect to see a lot of public schools and universities turned into shelters, and lots of half-assed evacuation plans put into action (which will promptly be swamped by the civilian populace doing whatever the hell they want anyway).

Click to expand...

On Saturday the Salvation Army enacted their Fishes and Loaves program at our local fairgrounds. Mind you, our county is very sparsely populated. I would estimate that there were at least 500/1000 folks standing in line waiting for food. I couldn't believe my eyes. From first glance, they didn't look poor, ragged, or for that matter needy. They appeared just like ordinary folks.
What we're talking about in a SHTF scenario, IMHO, is a tsunami of humanity overwhelming those that have prepared. That's the way I see it.

Most likely, the only plans are to save the "important people." I can tell you from experience about FEMA. When we had Hurricane Ike hit the Houston, Galveston area, they came with a bunch of trucks loaded with supplies. It took a county commissioner to force them to unload the food and supplies so that people could get them. Galveston was very hard hit, but instead of taking their mutiple semi-truckloads of bottled water there where they needed it, FEMA sent the trucks to an air force base near Sealy and dumped out all of the bottle water. And, this was 3 years after Katrina. They did not learn anything!

We the people of this "great" nation will be on our own. I feel our self serving gov. officials can't be bothered with the gen. population.

"The Plan" is to keep .gov infrastructure there. We are on our own.

we ehad shelterss in the 50's. our postoffice was one of them. but we don't have any shelters any more.
fema will come in after the fact. but don't count on them. ytour own preps will be waht keeps you going.

They're very quiet about it, but the old Civil Defense organization is still around. In theory, all those old fallout shelters (at least the ones that are still marked) are still legitimate shelters, and could be activated

This is true, there are lots of old civil defense shelters around--if you could locate one.
But even if you got in, you'd be sitting in a big cold empty, dusty room stacked hight with cleaning equipment, with no food and water

Civil Defense, as a funded federal program, ended officially in '94.

There are a handful of local governments that have some form of civil defense program for their people, but all in all--the official stance is that we must avoid a nuclear confrontation at all costs. If it comes to nuclear war, only the predesignated officials will be sheltered.

So, for the last 20 years or so, the fallout shelter business has arisen. Those who are in the know have been prepping with their own NBC shelters. There are of course several on this board who are in that group.

They're very quiet about it, but the old Civil Defense organization is still around. In theory, all those old fallout shelters (at least the ones that are still marked) are still legitimate shelters, and could be activated.

If you find a "fallout shelter" marked building, I can pretty much assure you its only because the sign hasn't fallen down or been ripped off. They'll be locked up tighter than a drum or as abandoned as any other place if the time would come, and the stores in them went bad or were pitched ages ago.

I'll take my chances on my own, rather than huddled in some basement with the great unwashed.

You're on your own. Shelters have not been maintained, if they even are still standing since the 50-60s.

If there happen to be any in your area that are still marked, they are not supplied and cannot be relied upon to be safe. If you're running to one, you better make sure you are also pulling all the supplies you are going to need while in there and be prepared to share with others who thought the same thing you did.

My town just "found" their shelter when doing renovations. The signs were still on the building, but no one ever paid attention to it. When they renovated, they tore down a wall that had been boarded up and inside was a room, still stocked with old outdated 50 yr old food and supplies. If you had used the marking on the building prior to that, you would never have found the room in time and gotten into it for safety and I suspect that is the same case throughout the US.

If you are "lucky (or unlucky) enough to live in an area with storm sirens, those might go off. But most of the country no longer has air raid sirens that work or are even still standing.

So in short, to answer your question: The US has done NOTHING to prepare its people for war. They have only made preparations to prepare its leaders.

So if you haven't started to prepare for your own family, you are almost out of time.

Don't believe we have. Over the past decade, I don't recall training for that on the local government level other than standard Incident Command Systems/NIMS training. Don't know if the emergency FEMA stockpiles have anything on that either.

I would say we have nothing on prevention, but may have something on medical treatment in the aftermath.

As harsh as it is say, the US was probably right in not maintaining shelters. Waste of funds. If you're close enough to a target to need long-term shelter and you don't have your own in place and stockpiled, odds are great that you're not going to last long anyway. Hardened mass civil shelters were never really realistic - Cheyenne Mountain itself isn't invulnerable anymore; neither are any of the mil hardened sites, if the other side really wanted to take them out. That's why you had the EC-135 airborne command post & radio relay aircraft back in the day, and the E-4Bs and E-6Bs today.

Best advice is to get the hell away from anything that could be construed as a target, if you're worried about such things...

One idea is to scout your immediate vicinity for potential "shelters" that are not labeled as such. You likely only have to remain sheltered between a week to two weeks, given the amount of fallout in your locale. I have my own shelter of course, but I also know that at the back my neighbor's yard there is a manhole cover that leads underground to the city water drainage system and utilities tunnel for this area. It could be in your area that an underground parking garage would offer some possibilities, or drainage culverts. Sandbags are helpful in any event if you have the wherewithal to fill them and stack them to provide adequate shielding, wherever you hole up.

Shinmen Takezo said:

They're very quiet about it, but the old Civil Defense organization is still around. In theory, all those old fallout shelters (at least the ones that are still marked) are still legitimate shelters, and could be activated

This is true, there are lots of old civil defense shelters around--if you could locate one.
But even if you got in, you'd be sitting in a big cold empty, dusty room stacked hight with cleaning equipment, with no food and water

Click to expand...

Ayup. US CD is now only practiced on the personal level. We have no national plan for civilians, with just a bunch of shelters either re-purposed, or in a state such that they should be condemned.

Archetype said:

As harsh as it is say, the US was probably right in not maintaining shelters. Waste of funds. If you're close enough to a target to need long-term shelter and you don't have your own in place and stockpiled, odds are great that you're not going to last long anyway. Hardened mass civil shelters were never really realistic - Cheyenne Mountain itself isn't invulnerable anymore; neither are any of the mil hardened sites, if the other side really wanted to take them out. That's why you had the EC-135 airborne command post & radio relay aircraft back in the day, and the E-4Bs and E-6Bs today.

Best advice is to get the hell away from anything that could be construed as a target, if you're worried about such things...

Click to expand...

It's one thing to cut funding to no longer maintain supplies at the facilities but to go as far as to even remove the signs that tell you where you might get shelter is an entirely different thing. When the program, as it was, pretty much ceased to exist around 1979 shortly after that funding was funneled to the COG program that was early on headed up by Cheney and Rumsfeld. In other words they took the money away from protecting the public and put into protecting themselves. I see a problem with that and I see a HUGE problem with the fact that they don't even want us to know where they facilities are anymore.

Doc,

In my area, the number of locations that might serve as proper shelters is almost zero. We used to have old school buildings with large underground hallways, toilet facilities...heavily constructed...bearing the civil defense signs (Remember them? Black and yellow, about 1 1/2' x 2', usually on the outside corners of the building.)

Doesn't matter. Most are gone now. As far as I can determine, the public is on its own here.

One counter point. Those old buildings had their pipes heavily wrapped in ASBESTOS. Not the best dust to be breathing after explosions rock the structure.

I'm very concerned but find myself thinking as a survivalist rather than a community emergency counselor. Expedient shelters are the next best thing IF constructed properly and with great thought regarding location. Many books cover the subject although "Life after Doomsday" by Bruce Clayton has the best work on the subject that I am aware of.

If you can't save the neighborhood, at least make an effort to save yourself.

FEMA has become the fallback plan of lots of folks. They don't need to prep. Just wait for the FEMA trucks to come to town.

IMHO, those people are beyond help. If I could do so without putting myself at extreme risk, I might try to assist or, if necessary, rescue some of the little kids around here. The parents are really nice but too damn stupid to understand the risks to children when war is making its presence known in your yard or neighborhood. I REALLY worry about subjects like that.

As a sweeping generality, the subject of Civil Defense, safety and survival of the public and overall emergency preparedness has taken a major slide backward. Most of us are aware of that unpleasant reality by now.

where the facilities are anymore

In virtually all of the cases, there are no "facilities" there. You're talking about large basements in public buildings, or what were public buildings back in the day. There's no assurance that they'd even be able to be entered now, much less that they'd be any kind of place you'd want to be in, or that they'd even be harder to destroy.

I grew up near a base that was almost certainly targeted by the Soviets. Couple miles away. There were shelter signs all over the place, and they were regarded as a joke. None of the buildings would have withstood what would have came in. Mil types always said that all the shelters were good for was to concentrate as many bodies as possible in as few areas as possible.

Community shelters would only be feasible anyway for prolonged crises leading up to an exchange; a bolt out of the blue attack with missiles coming in minutes isn't going to allow time to wake up everyone down to the local level, get the keys out (assuming they haven't been lost) open up the doors (assuming the custodians don't just throw their own families in and lock up behind themselves) get traffic control and the local PD in to maintain some kind of order. And if you've got time before an attack, why on earth would you get yourself huddled in some dank basement, in with the dregs of society (NONE of which are likely prepared) that you probably couldn't leave? Best to take your chances on your own. I'll hazard my own preparations, meager as they might be, over depending on my local government. They can't handle a couple inches of snow on the roads, let alone a nuclear attack.

"...Do We Have Public Shelters Here in CONUS?..."


We sure as heck did in the 1950's...and the Russkies and commie Chinese sure are supposedly still building them like crazy.

Apparently the US govt. is more intent on purchasing 100's of MILLIONS of rounds of murderous hollowpoint bullets than protecting
the Civil Population. THAT's a story that's still unfolding. The govt. isn't giving straight answers about that issue, but they're
supposedly NOT for normal military use.

One thing I picked up following severe weather over the years,

After the Joplin, MO tornado disaster and the Dixie Super Outbreak a few years ago, many communities felt a need to provide some kind of public shelters. Especially in areas down South that often do not have basements in private homes or apartments.

Some of the new plans allowed for people to take shelter in local hospitals because there were no other large basements in the area.

A huge problem developed, the hospitals were swamped by so many people seeking shelter that the hospitals were no longer able to function as an emergency trauma center.

I can easily see that during a nuclear event survivors will be unwelcome anywhere near an operating public or private institution. i would even guess that roads and bridges will be closed to, ahem, "contain" the "problem".

Years ago I read a book by I think GARY NORTH called something like "A FIGHTING CHANCE". He told how while we have absolutely no public shelters The Russians and Chicoms have invested very heavily in them because they believe nuclear war is winnable!

Here's some Cold War era stuff....

From SRI...
http://libweb.uoregon.edu/ec/e-asia/read/threeplans.pdf

See our sponsors at NukAlert, SurvivalCD.com and SafeCastle.com...

http://www.ki4u.com/guide.htm
http://www.radshelters4u.com/index3.htm

FEMA document from 2006...
Risk Management Series: Design Guidance for Shelters and Safe Rooms
FEMA 453 / May 2006
http://www.wbdg.org/ccb/DHS/fema453.pdf

One focused upon weather related threats....
Taking Shelter From the Storm: Building a Safe Room For Your Home or Small Business
Includes Construction Plans and Cost Estimates
FEMA 320, Third Edition / August 2008
http://www.in.gov/dhs/files/saferoom_guidance.pdf

This has also been posted here before but it is pertinent to the discussion....

http://www.ij-healthgeographics.com/content/6/1/5

Vulnerability of populations and the urban health care systems to nuclear weapon attack – examples from four American cities
William C Bell and Cham E Dallas*
Received: 22 December 2006
Accepted: 28 February 2007
Published: 28 February 2007

A good friend who's in the know told me that when I feel afraid and scared, to read Psalm 91 because it's true.


There is no way I'm going to worry about an evil gov. saving my neck.

C'mon people. The government is going to take care of everything for us, right? At least that's the mentality now-a-days. Look at what happens just in New Orleans when there is a hurricane and people are told there will only be a few shelters open and anyone planning on going to one needs to bring a 3 day supply of food and any other necessities. Hordes of people arrive empty handed, demanding they be fed, demanding Pampers, demanding places previously opened (and utterly destroyed by said demanders) be opened again. Others sit on their stoops waiting for the government to come get them and take them their shelter of choice. We've programmed them not to think for themselves and when the time comes that they have to, it's utter chaos.
A CD shelter of any kind would probably be worse inside than trying to survive on the outside.

I heard a ex-military man on Youtube say, FEMA and agency's alike are a mile long and a quarter of an inch deep.

Bolt said:

C'mon people. The government is going to take care of everything for us, right? At least that's the mentality now-a-days. Look at what happens just in New Orleans when there is a hurricane and people are told there will only be a few shelters open and anyone planning on going to one needs to bring a 3 day supply of food and any other necessities. Hordes of people arrive empty handed, demanding they be fed, demanding Pampers, demanding places previously opened (and utterly destroyed by said demanders) be opened again. Others sit on their stoops waiting for the government to come get them and take them their shelter of choice. We've programmed them not to think for themselves and when the time comes that they have to, it's utter chaos.
A CD shelter of any kind would probably be worse inside than trying to survive on the outside.

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Recall the Superdome during Katrina.....

Katrina and Andrew---Like remember the Alamo

CGTech said:

My opinion? Even though I'm up in Canada? Don't depend on FEMA... just look at what happened with Katrina... depend on yourselves only.. and the Lord...

Click to expand...

During the era of "the russians are coming" there were shelters from fallout and high calorie crackers.

Today, I think we are all on our own. After all, they want to thin the herd.

O.K., so you're not in your dream "prepper home" with a basement/storm shelter. Think outside the box. What do preppers have? Lots of stuff (ie buckets of food, cases of bottled water, cases of canned food, ammo cans full of ammo, etc.). If your home doesn't have a basement, utilize what you have to put mass and distance between you and fallout. Take interior doors off hinges to use as your "roof." Use stacks of prep items as your "walls." Many preppers have lots of books. I have lots of books (most still in sturdy boxes from our last move) that could also be used as mass in my "walls" or stacked on my "door-roofs". This room within a room might be tiny, but better than nothing.

Also, continuous ridge and soffet vent roofing now means more fallout in the attic. Also, fallout will come down that big open chimney and down those plumbing vent pipes sticking up on the roof. So take these into consideration when planning an expedient shelter.

The Mountain said:

Also, although no one has much confidence in FEMA, remember that they were ready ahead of time to help with Katrina, and were stymied by the incompetence of the governor and the chocolate mayor.

Click to expand...

That was their (FEMA's) story - which had no resemblance to the truth.

Fema is building a safe room in Mason City IA at the high school. This makes me go HMMMM!
http://www.kimt.com/mostpopular/story/Mason-City-FEMA-Shelter/QSWxeDWcNUSci_PYCVzMpg.cspx

See what you think.


Norma

The old CD "shelters" aren't hardened facilities meant to withstand direct strikes. They're just big rooms, somewhat overbuilt, meant to provide a more sturdy structure than a typical stick-built house (i.e. more likely to still be standing after a nearby strike), and to provide overhead cover against fallout. They were also intended for more ordinary emergencies where normal houses might not be available, such as after major storms or earthquakes. They are not dedicated facilities with filtered air, blastproof doors, isolated power etc; in other words, they're not bunkers.

I wouldn't want to be at any public shelter at all! That would be like Superdome II.