What if you used your ingenuity, and...
I just need a storm shelter to hide my carrots from George Bush and Obama.
So if shipping containers aren't the way to go, do we have any resources for making them out of concrete blocks?
Hey Crutch,
I didn't say that Shipping Containers wouldn't accomplish your mission, I said that you can't BURY them.
Time for a brainstorming session...
Okay, you take a 20' HIGH CUBE ISBU (because it's cheap, durable, easily insulated, taller than a standard 20' ISBU, and VERY easy to handle and manipulate using light farm tractors or a Lull) and you build your basic needs into it. Install an decent RV grade bathroom, and some bunks. And, just to keep momma happy, you install a decent kitchen cooktop, with some pantry storage. This can actually be accomplished for very little money, if you "start smart, and finish smart."
Consider starting this build using an old salvaged RV that you'll cannibalize for "parts."
Now, while you're doing that, go dig a big trench with a backhoe, deep enough to allow that HQ container (9.5' high) to sit on blocks or small pilings you constructed of scrap sonotubes as a foundation below grade. It's not gonna happen in an hour, you're going to be at it a while. but it'll work.
If you're really worried about the water table, you can build earth berms to form that "trench" too... You'll just be building a hollow hill, instead of a "hole."
You can stabilize the soil by shooting lightweight concrete onto the sloping sides of the trench (just like spraying gunite to form a pool), or you can use scraps to form retaining walls... I don't care. Just insure that the ground doesn't move. Then, just build some access steps.
And, if you terrace those inner sloping walls slightly, you can use them for stuff like garden locations for a container (pottery and such) garden.
Add a liberal amount of gravel in the bottom of your "trench" under that ISBU for decent drainage, and then...
(I'm simplifying this. There are a few more required labor steps.)
Forget about covering it with dirt. Too expensive, too dangerous, and it's just another layer of potential "traps".
Just stretch a big pitched waterproof tarp system over the whole thing. And then... stretch a nice camo net over the top of it from one side of the trench to the other. Now, you've done a David Copperfield and made a big steel box disappear. For almost no money.
And now, you also have a water retention system, as a bonus. Gardens need water, and so do you.
Plant some viney stuff near that netting so it'll crawl out over it, and make sure that stuff has thorns.
Within no time at all, you won't be able to see it unless you're standing close to it.
You can even improvise "skylights" and such, to allow you to take advantage of that outside shaded area around that ISBU. Now you can lounge outside, in the shade, "under cover".
Congrats! You just built an "underground bunker" with none of the liabilities, or perils. And, you can't get trapped in it, because you can cut your way out if you have to.
Obviously I've simplified this, but it IS a starting point.
Hmmm...
"Has he really done this?" you ask...
Over a dozen times. Recently. For guys and gals just like US, who see a storm coming and need to protect their families.
And it was a lot cheaper than it sounds.