Not such a crazy idea !

[Anna]

There are people near here that have been doing this as underground shelters for years .
Around here back in the 1980s you could buy an old minuteman or atlas silo for around $2,500.00.
Not anymore but I have seen people turning to this as an alternative .
These Conex boxes can be stacked cut and welded into some pretty fancy residences and they can
withstand about any kind of weather .
I've even seen them planted somewhere remote as a bug out shelter or a gun vault away from any
dwelling where unwanted visitors may come poking around .
Some of them even have climate controls built right into them and are insulated and totally leak
proof . With even compressed clean air bottles to keep them completely self contained.
Or CO2 scrubbers like used by NASA for live cargo that could keep you going away from the outside
air for a couple of weeks as long as you had plenty of filters. Just saying .
http://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20130301/williamsburg/couple-builds-home-out-of-shipping-containers-williamsburg

[nw_hunter]

Not bad Anna, but isn't 400,000 a little steep to live in a container box?
With 400,000 in the bank, I would just leave NY

[mannyrock]

Anna,
 
    If a nuclear event ever occurred that would warrant the practical use of such an underground shelter, then the world as you know it would basically be gone, and within a year or three (after considerable starvation and suffering) you would die from a cancer from the radio-active particles carried by the wind, settling on the top of the soil, in the groundwater, and in your lungs. 
 
   As for a shtf scenario, a structure like this could never ever be kept secret.   All of your neighbors, indeed the whole town, would know about it.   It would become a magnet for attack and siege, because starving folks would rightly or wrongly conclude that you have years and years of food and supplies buried within.    Ever see the WWII films of the German grenadiers attacking the "indestructable" buried concrete fortresses on the French Maginot line?   It was pretty easy to open them up.  And in a shtf scenario, you can rest assured that the thousands of tons of commercial tnt stored at commercial facilities will not just disappear into space.  People who work there will take it, trade it, use it.
 
   Nope, the only fortresses that ever lasted for a really long time against constant attack were the walls and defenses erected by the Romans and the Eastern Holy Roman Empire around the City of Constantinople.  (This city was originally named Istanbul, and was taken by them from the Muslims.)  I believe that the defenses were built around the year 200AD, and held back the constant attacks by the Turks and Muslims for about 800 years, until it finally fell around 1,000 AD.  They promptly renamed it Instanbul and it remains so named to this day.
 
   Just my thoughts.
 
Mannyrock
 
   

[Anna]

Anna,
 
    If a nuclear event ever occurred that would warrant the practical use of such an underground shelter, then the world as you know it would basically be gone, and within a year or three (after considerable starvation and suffering) you would die from a cancer from the radio-active particles carried by the wind, settling on the top of the soil, in the groundwater, and in your lungs. 
 
   As for a shtf scenario, a structure like this could never ever be kept secret.   All of your neighbors, indeed the whole town, would know about it.   It would become a magnet for attack and siege, because starving folks would rightly or wrongly conclude that you have years and years of food and supplies buried within.    Ever see the WWII films of the German grenadiers attacking the "indestructable" buried concrete fortresses on the French Maginot line?   It was pretty easy to open them up.  And in a shtf scenario, you can rest assured that the thousands of tons of commercial tnt stored at commercial facilities will not just disappear into space.  People who work there will take it, trade it, use it.
 
   Nope, the only fortresses that ever lasted for a really long time against constant attack were the walls and defenses erected by the Romans and the Eastern Holy Roman Empire around the City of Constantinople.  (This city was originally named Istanbul, and was taken by them from the Muslims.)  I believe that the defenses were built around the year 200AD, and held back the constant attacks by the Turks and Muslims for about 800 years, until it finally fell around 1,000 AD.  They promptly renamed it Instanbul and it remains so named to this day.
 
   Just my thoughts.
 
Mannyrock
 
 

Boy you don't live where I live , a good backhoe and a few days work in the middle of nowhere at a
cost that's less than a used car . I don't know where they are but I've seen people do it.
I surly wouldn't think they would be for anything long term. But neither would be a silo .
But it would get you out of the initial chaos where most of the stockpiled ammo and food would be
depleted rather quickly . Anything else like you said your eventually dead anyway but at least you
tried . Anything else is like saying , hay I live in tornado alley in a mobile home but a tornado is
going to get me anyway so what's the use ?


NW this couple went all out but look at their initial investment . I've seen these Conex boxes at auctions go for anywhere from $500 to $2000 dollars in good shape .
Mine that I use for storing feed in cost me $300 dollars at a RR auction four years ago .
I've also seen people pick up rail cars even cheaper than that , its the truckers to move them that's
the real expense . I haven't seen any for sale in a long time but a single man who lives a few miles from me bought an old caboose for 3k. He really fixed it up nice with a front porch and has been
connecting these containers onto the back of it .

[mannyrock]

Anna,
 
   I admire your spirit, but I lived in the most rural part of West Tennessee for 14 years, not a neighbor within a mile, and I can promise you that everyone will know of your project.   The trucker who delivers the Conex box will chat, the guys who run the dozer and backhoe will chat, the guy who does the cutting and welding will really really chat, and then if you have any septic, electrical or drainage work done, everyone in the county building will know.   People in rural areas are really bored, and a project like yours would be a hot topic for discussion at the feedstore, lumber yard, plumbing supply and especially the diner.   "Did ya hear that that young woman with the black hair up on ______ creek is building herself an underground survival bunker?  My brother in law did the backhoe work on it.  Says it'll be giantic.  Full of guns, ammunition and survival supplies!   I may go up there on Sunday and take a look, before it all gets covered up."
 
  The following week, the reporter for the local paper will show up, to do the story.
 
Best Mannyrock,
 
   

[Anna]

Manny there are ways around all of that . Out here we have what the banks call super mechanics .
Who by themselves can do or fix just about anything .
And a few of them own all the equipment needed to compleat any project they set their minds to .
A lot of the people who bought the silos are known to have them . But few people know where they
are, scattered all around in places not even the Russians knew where they were .
Besides any place that was built to withstand a nuclear strike isn't going to be all that easy to break into. Some illegals accidentally got locked in one some years ago and all the efforts to get them out
failed , it became a tomb . If a rancher hadn't been chastening them off his land they never would have known it happened . This is not the hills of Tenn.
Its the high desert of NM a state nearly as large as Texas . Its not uncommon to have 100 sq. miles
of wilderness around any given location . Its also dotted with caves and caverns people only know
of the one near Carlsbad. The outback near Alpine and Sanderson Texas even does not come close
to this . People get lost out here and never found with no roads dirt or otherwise to guide them .
GPS works but there are places here where natural magnetic forces render that useless.

[mechanic]

Anna, that sounds like heaven to me.  I may be moving soon to the center of a 100 sq. miles near you...
 
I'm sure Sweet Thang would go along......on second thought...never mind.
 
Ben
 
 

[Anna]

Ben look at a map of this state . There isn't anything between Roswell and Vaughn except 120 miles
across the state of nothing . And Vaughn isn't much to brag about except for the wooden Indian
that's a cigar rack at its only store .
Roswell to the east is nothing but the Caprock, a cliff barrier that is 400 ft. tall and extends for 90
miles north and south . Its a hunters dream out there for deer and herds of antelope .
Its littered with caves and is only accessible on foot , horses break their legs around there.
To the west of the Caprock is the Mescalero basin , 100 miles of nothing but hard desert all the way
to Roswell and north and south its 250 miles long .
That's where all the silos were hidden out during the Cold War . The only entrance to them is a door
structure about the size of a small storage building . Hidden in a cluster of mesquite trees if you
didn't know it was there you would never find it .
The Historical society ended up with all of them when they were abandoned under the salt treaties.
Sperry Rand bought up a lot of them for data storage .
And there were vast structures built into the cliff face of the Caprock itself .
Atlas component storage is what they were for . But all of this is extremely over hardened with 12ft
thick steel reinforced concrete .     
Convince the Historical Society that your not going to use it as a hazardous waist dump . And that
you intend to live there and keep it as much as original as possible .
And you get one heck of an underground dwelling for next to nothing . But the expense is getting it
livable again , most of these places have been unoccupied for over 50 years .