Expedient Shelter Construction: and Occupancy Experiments
About this ebook
Research was undertaken to evaluate how average citizens could create their own shelters in the case of a political crisis that could lead to a nuclear attack. It was known that at this time in the mid-1970s, after Civil Defense planning and spending had waned since the 1950’s-60’s, that both the Soviet Union and China had more preparations for their citizens in major urban areas.
This book was created under the auspices of the U.S. ERDA, an agency created in 1974 when the Atomic Energy Commission was split into the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the ERDA.
This practical field research study became the original basis for Cresson Kearny’s more extensive book “Nuclear War Survival Skills”. What makes this report interesting and different is the wealth of extra info and photos that were NOT included in the book mentioned above.
Simple shelters that can be built in 1 to 3 days and are outlined in this book are:
- The Need for Improved Expedient Shelters
- Door-Covered Trench Shelter
- Stress test of Door-Covered Trench Shelter
- Log-covered Trench Shelter
- Occupancy test of Log-Covered Shelter
- Above-Ground Door-Covered Shelter
- Car-Over Trench Shelter
- Large Log-Covered Trench Shelter
- Overall conclusions and recommendations
From the Introduction:
"This report strongly indicates the practicality of tens of millions of Americans evacuating into rural areas and building and occupying high-protection-factor expedient shelters during an escalating international crisis. This concept was successfully tested by untrained families who built expedient shelters during winter in Colorado, summer in Utah, and spring in Florida. Their efforts are presented in this report primarily by the captioned photographs showing these typical American families evacuating their homes, driving to rural shelter-building sites, and then, with hand tools, constructing their own shelters.
These average, mostly urban, American families were guided only by step-by-step, well-illustrated, written instructions given to them at the start of each experiment. Crisis conditions were simulated, and adequate motivation was provided by the promise of a cash bonus for completion of the shelter within 36 or 48 hours, depending on the difficulty of construction. All families, or groups of families, succeeded in winning the bonus, with one exception.
The shelters built by the test families included the Door-Covered Trench Shelter, the Log-Covered Trench Shelter (which the building family occupied for 77 hours without emerging), and the Car-Over-Trench Shelter. Also, families are pictured while building four above-ground shelters designed for high-water-table or shallow-soil areas: the Above-Ground Door-Covered Shelter, the Crib-Walled Shelter, the Ridge-Pole Shelter, and the A-Frame Pole Shelter. These four above-ground shelters have protection factors (PF) in the range of 250 to 500. "
Keywords: Civil defense,shelter,nuclear war,fallout,survival,improvised,radioactivity
About the author
Kearny attended Texas Military Institute in the 1930s, and earned a degree in civil engineering at Princeton University, graduating summa cum laude in 1937. He won a Rhodes Scholarship and went on to earn two degrees in geology at the University of Oxford. During the Sudeten Crisis he acted as a courier for an underground group helping anti-Nazis escape from Czechoslovakia.
Following graduation from Oxford, Kearny joined a Royal Geographic Society expedition in the Peruvian Andes. He then worked as an exploration geologist for Standard Oil in the Orinoco jungles of Venezuela, where he became familiar with equipment and tools of the native inhabitants of the region. He later used the information gained from this experience to develop specialized jungle equipment for U.S. military forces.
In 1940, Kearny went on active duty as an infantry reserve lieutenant in the United States Army. Recognized for his knowledge of jungle travel and use of specialized tools and equipment, Kearny was soon assigned to Panama as the Jungle Experiments Officer of the Panama Mobile Force, and was promoted to captain. In that capacity he was able to invent, improve, and/or field test much of the specialized jungle equipment and rations used by U.S. infantrymen in World War II. Adoption of the jungle field ration and the jungle hammock as standard equipment by the US Army in World War II is credited to Kearny, along with improvements to many other items of tropical gear, such as the Panama-soled jungle boot and the M1942 Machete. In recognition of his service, he was soon promoted to major and awarded the Legion of Merit.
Kearny later volunteered for duty with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), where he served as a demolition specialist in southern China in 1944. In 1961 he took a position doing civil defense research with the Hudson Institute. In 1964 he joined the Oak Ridge National Laboratory civil defense project. During the Vietnam War, Kearny served as a civilian adviser to the U.S. Army, making several trips to the theater of operations. He died in 2003.
In a New York Times obituary, his daughter Stephanie commented: "Throughout his life he believed in being prepared for trouble."
