bunker: December 2009 Archives

From it's inception, the RECESS remodel has been a beast of burden. A desire for discretion, and limited access to the rear of our property meant that the entire demolition would be done by hand.


Two of the original side walls would be retained as structural support for RECESS (highlighted here).


The remainder of the yard: original concrete deck,  retaining walls, sand, and soil would be broken down and hauled piece by piece and by wheel barrow.

Bugging Out is a popular concept in disaster preparedness and survival literature. A carefully equipped RECESS makes this concept irrelevant. The notion of fleeing to a Utopian existence and the bountiful resources of "the hills" is far from practical. RECESS allows your family to hunker down and wait out the worst case scenario, while the community around you flails and falters. Strategic raids into your surrounding suburban environment will yield far greater bounty than the often hostile and barren landscape surrounding your now comfortable community.

Forget the bug-out pack, there is no bug out.  Get prepared, follow the rules, and bug-in. I suggest keeping a well stocked pack, equipped with everything you will need for a multi-day raiding run. If your RECESS is compromised, or you have immediate need to move to another location this pack can serve as your short-term support system.

The idea for the bunker came to me after months of staring at the pit that dominated my yard.

The pit was a constant embarrassment and point of contention with my neighbors, a blight on my property, a cesspool after every rainfall, and a continued cause for concern as the economy and housing market slid further into depression.

One day in late 2007 I was standing on a plank spanning what used to be the deep end of my pool.  I could see hundreds of miles of dessert, stretching all the way to ground zero of the atomic age- trinity site. Leaping off the board, I was surrounded by concrete walls and hidden from the world.

I knew in that instant that the most pressing and appropriate use of this space - regardless of all other desires - would be the construction of a fortified bunker for my family, and future owners of this property.

What do you do with a pool in the dessert? (Are you listening Las Vegas?) Leisure space is a premium, and I had no yard. I had a big ugly hole. What I needed was a design that optimally balanced living space and locally-appropriate purpose. I decided to build a survival bunker.

One of my favorite local swimming pool remodels can be credited to my friend David. His house had a concrete bottom pool that he promptly filled in with dirt to make a nice garden. He and his wife grow much of their own food now.

I love that idea. They took an utter waste of a scarce local resource, and turned it into vital sustenance. Had my pool not entirely dominated the landscape of our back yard, I may have ended up with a garden myself. But I had two key differences to consider: 1. our yard was terraced, 2. the pool had a sand bottom, making it easier to remove. In the end, my yard became a remodel, a reconfiguration, and re-contextualization of its original form.

The "pool" would go, but the water would remain. I would "fill" the space with a void, and use that space to store an emergency cache of water and life-sustaining supplies. The yard would remain terraced, but clever design would serve to mask the existence the much deeper hidden cavity in its center.

Building a Bunker
RECESS began 2 years ago when I made my home in the southwest United States. Like much of the West, our reliance on the continuous import of vital resources (food, water, medical supplies) is unsustainable and untenable. Crisis preparedness is vital, and RECESS is my answer. It is a re-model, an insurance policy, an experiment, a test of personal mettle, and an obsession. Survival is everything.