Waiting for the End of the World...We once thought we would all be nuked into oblivion (pics)

http://www.good.is/post/picture-show-waiting-for-the-end-of-the-world/

Self-preservation is something that most humans take quite seriously, and that a few take to extremes. Faced with the real or imagined threat of attacks levied by nuclear, biological, and chemical weaponry, some people opt to head 25 feet underground, surrounded by concrete and complex air-filtration systems, surviving off rations and waiting, so to speak, for the end of the world.

That’s the subject of Richard Ross’s Waiting for the End of the World, originally published by Princeton Architectural Press in 2004, for which Ross spent five years traveling over three continents, photographing the interiors of bomb shelters. “I’m a child of the late 1950s,” he says. “I grew up in an era of duck-and-cover drills, where we always had to be acquainted with the idea of The Bomb.” The exploration took Ross into a series of survivalist spaces, offering a visual index of the lengths to which people will go when they feel abused or threatened. “I ended up photographing an underground bomb shelter in Livermore, California, looking straight up , and the light was very divine and was essentially apocalyptic,” he says. “Some of these people thought they were going to be the new inhabitants of the Garden of Eden. I can’t believe that. But when you think back to the illogic of the Bush/Cheney administration, and the world around you is so devolved, the idea of going underground doesn’t seem so crazy.”


The proud owner of a new single-family residence in Switzerland shows off his shelter. He is standing in front of his Andair-manufactured air filtration system with the escape hatch on the right.


The discs produced in this factory near Zurich are the tops of air filters.


Charlie Hull Shelter, Emigrant, Montana. Bedroom. This 90-family “co-op shelter” was for members of the Elizabeth Clare Prophet Church, which predicted Doomsday on March 15, 1990. That day, the shelter was full; everyone emerged on March 16th and went home. The shelter has fallen out of favor and is maintained only by Charlie Hull and a few assistants.


Charlie Hull Shelter. Each of the 90 families for which the shelter was built chose their own spaces and equipped them with what they deemed necessary for their transition from a pre- to post-apocalypse. Some decorated their spaces with pink lace or hung up pictures.

snip for many more fun photos

I became truly terrified about a nuke exchange after I retired from the service. Until then I was always on Ground Zero and if the Unthinkable happened, I probably wouldn't even realize it when I was reduced to hot atoms.

After, it occurred that I could live through it and that made for nightmares.

talk about intense:scared:

My father was stationed there in the early 60's (65, 66, 67) -- we lived in Coco Solo.

That was one gorgeous place to grow up..I've always wanted to go back, but have been afraid to see what "progress" did to it:(

Did you go to the Tivoli Buffet when you were there?
Santa Clara beach?

Did you learn to speak Spanish while you were there?

We had a nanny who only spoke Spanish to my sister and I and my Mom said we were getting quite good at speaking and understanding it. Unfortunately, after we left I never spoke it again.

but the years afterward, living in Kansas & Indiana fogged it all up in my brain.

We had a maid named Matilda, who didn't speak English, so I was the one who communicated with her.

Immoral words of first shirt, "If you live through it, remember you are still members of the USAF." Talking here about a mob of teenage one stripers whose biggest worry six months ago was what to wear to the senior prom.

:puke: