Emergency Shelters (not to be confused with Homeless/DV/SafePlace shelters) come in two forms, Temporary and Permanent. Assembly rooms in churches, schools, and businesses can often be converted into a public Temporary emergency shelter for victims. Tents for use as private Temporary emergency shelter should be stored in a nearby accessible location outside of your house.
Temporary Emergency Shelters
Permanent emergency shelters are primarily intended as places of refuge during an emergency. While a normal building does an adequate job of protecting you from normal events, it will usually not be sufficient to protect you from a cataclysm. Therefore, whenever you construct a new building or make a major renovation to an existing building, a Safe Room (storm shelter) should be included as a part of the plan. Besides, the shelters extra square footage will add resale value to the finished project.
Permanent public and private emergency shelters are not just a safeguard during war. Natural events such as tornados, require strong sheltering protection against deadly airborne debris; and accidents such as chemical spills, require hermetic sheltering protection against poison contamination. While a good shelter will offer protection from Blast and Gas and Fallout, a Permanent shelters protection triangle can be skewed to focus more on what are believed to be the most probable local threats.
General emergency shelter design caveats
NOTE: With an Atomic (fission) explosion, as with a large conventional explosion, the main concern is with heat and blast. With a Hydrogen (fusion) explosion, the main concern is with fallout. Over the course of the last century the probability of what types of bombs would be used by country leaders, military field units, and fundamentalist groups has shifted back and forth. Currently a large conventional or small yield fission explosion is the most likely destructive bomb that would be targeted against civilians, as is reflected by the recent US government emphasis away from fallout shelters and back toward blast shelters.
