"Ohh, its Christmas at Ground Zero. The button has been pressed..."

For those poor unfortunate souls who have no idea where the title of this blog came from see below link.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t039p6xqutU

For those poor unfortunate souls who have no idea where I got "Poor unfortunate souls" from see below link.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VyFVG4VfPmg

     Anyhoo, on with today's rant.  I spent a healthy portion of my childhood living during the Cold War Era.  Mutually Assured Destruction (That's MAD by the way not MADD which is Mothers Against Drunk Driving which is more about preservation than destruction and a moniker I find suitably appropriate...but I digress.) was the natural order of life.  We could live in comfort (Snigger) knowing that if the Russkies ever dropped the H-Bomb on us, we could spin around and turn Russia into a sea of glass.  Yeah everybody would be dead, but hey at least we got each other!

     During this era, Bomb shelters were insanely popular because everyone wanted to survive the final nuclear holocaust.  Heck, there was even a very simple concrete bunker bomb shelter on the land of one of the houses my family rented.   Now most of these shelters would not have survived a direct hit from a fire cracker barrage, let alone an Umpteen Dozen Ton Hydrogen Bomb, but I guess it gave people some degree of (illusionary) comfort.  Sure there were massive, self contained shelters but those were the domain of the rich and very powerful.  Of course the humorous part of all the billions of dollars spent to build these things is that only two bombs were ever dropped in an act of aggression and they happened long before the Cold War heated up.

http://gma.yahoo.com/bomb-shelter-boom-sees-underground-pools-basketball-courts-222036802--abc-news-lifestyle.html

     Well, it seems like we have come full circle again.  With Global tensions running at all time highs with nutjobs like Little Dough Boy from NK or "We are not trying to build bombs" from Iran posturing and yelling, people are getting nervous again.  With Soviet Era Nukes going missing left and right like car keys, people are getting scared.  Suddenly the idea that someone might carry a nuke into a major city and set off a nuclear chain reaction has people crapping in their metaphorical pants.  So once again, people are building bomb/survival shelters "just in case."

Home Sweet Bomb Shelter, Circa 1950s

     Above is a picture of what a fairly expensive and advanced Bomb Shelter during the cold war would have looked like.  A fairly prosperous family could have afforded to have something like this built.  Beyond what is shown here, some models would have also had fold down bunks and some for of storage for food and supplies.

Surviving in Style!

     Above is what a modern bomb shelter looks like.  These days for the price of a really nice house, you can have a...well a really nice house only underground and complete with air/water filtration systems and a horticulture area to grow your own food.  Not too shabby.  Hells if I have the money, I would love to build my retirement home to be like this.
     Of course, you are wondering exactly how is this a rant?  Where's the gumpiness?  Where's the Snarkiness that you have come to know and love/hate?  Simple, the bomb shelter boom (Bomb...Boom...Get it?) happened out of this insane, propaganda driven idea that we were all doomed because we couldn't play nice with each other and everyone was going to drop their nukes on everyone else.  For decades we lived in a Government generated cloud of fear and terror.  We finally moved beyond that and started trying to live our lives again.
    Now I see it happening all over again.  Their side/s toss out threats and propaganda to try to terrify us.  Our side tosses out our own propaganda that paints their side as mad dogs who are a threat to global peace.  The News Agencies grab hold of both and broadcast it out for headlines and ratings.  We are rapidly slipping back into that Cold War Mentality where fear is the rule.
     I am not saying that there aren't threats to peace out there.  Hell we have quite a few right here in the US.  I am not saying that some Nutjob couldn't lob a nuke from NK or Iran.  I freely admit that some crazed individual could smuggle a pony nuke into a major city and set it off.  These are all real possibilities.  However, unless every single individual in the world suddenly looses what is left of their minds and launches all of their ICBMs at once, the threat of global thermal nuclear warfare (God I still love that movie!) is very slim.
     We learned to move away from the fear once and the world was a much better place for it.  So if we can learn to do it once when the threat seemed pretty tangible, can't we just say "Fugg It!" and move past it again?  Besides, lets be honest.  Despite what the Government and Builders of Bomb Shelters want you to believe, if WWIII ever happens and all the buttons get pressed, there won't be a whole lot of people left to worry about it and these shelters just mean that you can at least burn in luxury.