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With its thick concrete walls, smooth, curved, and cool,
the bomb shelter could hold my entire Cub Scout den. I don’t recall
being concerned by the underground room’s true purpose, nor by the
worries that moved my den mother’s family to install it. The thing
was just a fun place to play.
Most of those old shelters lay buried and forgotten
until the late, great Y2K scare, when a few were filled with canned
goods and a smattering of others constructed. My favorite story was
of the fellow who buried a fleet of 42 busses before the end of the
millennium, rigging them out as a sort of Armageddon Holiday Inn
that could accommodate up to 500 people. I have no idea what became
of the complex, though I imagine it would be a great place for a Cub
Scout meeting.
With fear back in fashion, shelter sales are reportedly
on the rise.
The real action, however, is in protection from radiation
poisoning and other possible terror weapons. Few believe al-Qaida
has the means to deliver a nuke, but there is little doubt Osama and
the boys would like to inflict as much harm as possible. And where
there’s fear, there’s profit.
After the government announced this month the arrest of
a man suspected of plotting to build a “dirty bomb,” web-based
Nukepills.com reported a thousandfold increase in the sales of
potassium iodide tablets. A dirty bomb is simply a conventional
explosive used to spread radioactive material; potassium iodide is
said to block the body’s absorption of radioactive iodine, the main
contaminant from such an explosion.
Nukepills.com is not alone.
KI4U.com (KI is the chemical abbreviation for potassium iodide)
sells a different brand of the pills and also functions as a
self-styled clearinghouse for information on radiation poisoning.
There one can learn nuclear survival skills, how to build your own
radiation meter, and the proper potassium iodide dosages for
children and pets. You wouldn’t want Fido glowing like a lightning
bug, apocalypse or not.
You can’t block radiation poisoning if you can’t find
it, so no post-September 11 home should be without a Geiger
counter. In spring 2001 the owner of KI4U.com picked up
120,000 of the devices that had been gathering dust in a federal
storage depot. I imagine they continued to collect dust in his own
warehouse until September 11, but have been flying off the shelves
since.
Buying 120,000 Geiger counters before September 11
strikes me as one heck of a gamble, even if it did pay off in
hindsight. The guy with the 42 busses buried in his back yard must
be kicking himself silly.
There are a number of lessons in all this, one of which
is that when people get scared they buy things, things that make
them feel secure or in control. Then the threat passes, the bomb
shelter fills with junk from the garage and the emergency food grows
stale in the closet. I suspect – and pray – a similar fate awaits
potassium iodide.
I don’t begrudge anyone a little preparation; truth be
told, I have a couple of cases of beef stew left over from Y2K
myself. Nor do I take issue with making a buck by filling a demand,
which is what successful businesses do.
Still, a lot of folks turned elsewhere after the
attacks. Churches reported increased attendance as people looked to
God, many for the first time. Some of this was genuine, while the
rest was akin to a spiritual bomb shelter, a safe place to hide
until the all-clear sounds.
But unlike human vagaries, eternity is, well, eternal.
It does not ascend or fall with human events, even if our interest
level does. If dust now settles on a few less souls, some good will
have come.
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