I am not real­ly sure this is going to apply to those of us who live in apart­ments.  How­ev­er, I may touch on that in this post.

Much of what we dis­cuss, or I write, rather, revolves around bug­ging out.  As men­tioned in a pre­vi­ous post, I was going to con­sid­er sit­u­a­tions in the sub­urbs or urban areas that might require bug­ging in.  My assump­tion up until recent­ly has been that I would be ahead of the “event” that might occur and bug out.  Well, what if that is not the case? What if, I am stuck in my apart­ment and you are stuck in your home, and there is no get­ting out, at least not for 72 hours?  What if there is a chem­i­cal or bio­log­i­cal issue that you need to pro­tect your­self and your fam­i­ly from?  What if you need a room to keep your fam­i­ly pro­tect­ed from home inva­sion?  What if???

Well, we’ve seen the movies, we’ve heard some hype, and we think the safe room has to be expen­sive with closed cir­cuit TV, com­mu­ni­ca­tions equip­ment, etc.  I am here to tell you that it does not have to be so high tech.  It just needs to sus­tain and pro­tect you and your fam­i­ly from a dan­ger­ous sit­u­a­tion.

That said, should it be long term, should it be short term?  I am per­son­al­ly, not real­ly sure.  I would sus­pect you might want to build it for as long term as pos­si­ble with­out build­ing it for a year.  Your phi­los­o­phy is your own so build it how­ev­er you think it needs to be built.   This clear­ly may lend itself to those who own homes or rent homes.  Apart­ments are a lit­tle tougher, as they are gen­er­al­ly small­er, and have less space for stor­age, and aug­ment­ing an apart­ment with addi­tion­al walls and secret doors, I would imag­ine might be frowned upon by the build­ing land­lord and super­in­ten­dents.

So, what spe­cif­ic sit­u­a­tions might a safe room serve?  Here is a small list that I came up with:

• Poten­tial home inva­sion
• Bio­log­i­cal attack
• Chem­i­cal attack
• Nuclear fall­out (although hard­er to pro­tect from)
• Storm Shel­ter
• Gun safe/storage
• Jew­el­ry storage/safe

There may be more to this list, so feel free to com­ment on it.

You may now be ask­ing how to build a safe room in your home and how to equip it to keep your fam­i­ly safe going for­ward.  I’ve done a lit­tle research for you on the why and the how, so please see the below list of URLs for your review.  I fig­ured there was no rea­son to recre­ate the wheel when there is so much good con­tent out there on the web already:

Why:

• http://urbansurvivalplan.com/299/saferoom/
• http://www.captaindaves.com/saferoom.html
• http://thesurvivalretreat.blogspot.com/2010/01/do-you-have-safe-room-bomb-shelter.html
• http://www.nononsenseselfdefense.com/saferoom.htm

How:

• http://www.unitedstatesaction.com/survival-kit.htm
• http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/HAW2/pdf/building_safe_room.pdf
• http://www.ehow.com/how_2174679_safe-room-survive-disasters.html
• http://www.doityourself.com/stry/how-to-build-a-tornado-safe-room
• http://www.homesafetytoday.net/secret_bookcase_door.htm
• http://www.hiddendoors.net/

Here are a cou­ple of com­mon issues I see.  Much of what I have read does not take heat­ing and hygiene/toilet facil­i­ties.  If you are uti­liz­ing a safe room for more than 12 / 24 hours, this may be a real con­cern if you have to stay for any real length of time, espe­cial­ly if it is win­ter and you are in an area where it can get very cold, or an area where it can get very hot in the sum­mer.  Some type of air cir­cu­la­tion like a fan is rec­om­mend­ed.  That is just my opin­ion.