Small California city welcomes doomsday bunkers

Does it say anything about the state of economic and social affairs when one of the few growth industries in California is building underground survival shelters?

From The Fresno Bee:

LOS ANGELES — In the backyard of his remote Southern California home, Bernie Jones is etching an unconventional blueprint: a construction plan to build his underground survival shelter. It won’t be the typical, cramped Cold War-era bunker. It will hold 20 people.

Part of a small but vocal group of survivalists in Menifee, some 80 miles east of Los Angeles, Jones, 46, has pushed for the right to build a bunker on his 1-acre property for nearly a year. He wants to be ready for anything, be it natural disaster or a nuclear attack.

“The world is taking a change,” he says. “I want to be prepared. I want my family to survive.”

Residents of the small city once known for its farming and mining can begin applying for permits to build their subterranean housing this month after the City Council passed a hotly contested ordinance allowing the practice.

Americans have been building underground bunkers for decades, their interest in such shelters waxing and waning with current events. Many dug backyard fallout shelters during the Cold War, fearing a nuclear war.

This next generation of bunkers comes as many survivalists face heightened concerns of a terrorist attack, economic meltdown and for some, even solar flares or meteor showers.

“The bunker is a type of security blanket,” says Stephen O’Leary, an expert in apocalyptic and end-of-the-world theories at the University of Southern California. “They are concerned with what’s happening in the world on a massive scale.”