Bunker mentality

Ihor is determined to survive a nuclear strike, so he rehearses his evacuation every time there’s a missile alert. After years of war, everyone has found their own way of coping with the constant Russian bombardment — even if nobody ever totally gets used to them.

Indeed, each time the air-raid siren sounds is terrifying, and for those living in the combat zone, it’s a deadly lottery. Even for those who live far from the frontline in western Ukraine, air-raids serve as a regular reminder that the war is still going on and nowhere in the country is truly safe.

While many people are just hoping to make it through the night, others are expecting the worst, fearing that the war could end with a nuclear strike at any moment, and that, when that happens, they will be left with nobody to rely on but themselves.

A necessary survivalist

Now in his forties, Ihor was born and raised in western Ukraine and spent 15 years working for the national railways before starting his own business. He is now self-employed and runs a YouTube channel called Survivalist, which is aimed at preppers, or those who are actively preparing for occupation, natural disasters, or a nuclear strike.

The prepper movement has its origins in the United States, when, during the Cold War, a nuclear apocalypse seemed all but inevitable to many Americans. In 1961, at the height of the Berlin Crisis, President Kennedy warned the nation of a potential nuclear strike on US soil, and stressed the importance of special fallout shelters for survivors without ever clarifying where so many shelters were supposed to come from.

Americans began converting their basements and backyards into makeshift bunkers shortly afterwards as a result. “Mr. Khrushchev could make a mistake tomorrow,” proclaimed an advertisement by the Wonder Building Corporation, which made millions selling private nuclear shelters in just a few months.

Though the predicted catastrophe failed to materialise and fallout shelter sales quickly dwindled, for some, the president’s warning lingered. One of those people was Kurt Saxon, a deranged Nazi party member and self-described Satanist who in the mid-1960s began publishing his thoughts on how to survive the eventual collapse of society and manufacture homemade weapons. In the 1970s, he launched a newsletter called The Survivor and declared himself the world’s first “survivalist.”

Survivalism only reached Russia and Ukraine after the collapse of the USSR, but just as they do elsewhere, preppers in both countries have a wide range of online platforms to share resources and discuss tactics. While for some survivalism is a hobby, for others it’s a matter of life and death.

Before the war, Ihor had never been interested in survivalism. Everything changed on 24 February 2022, however. “On the very first day of the invasion, like many others, I ran to the shop and filled two enormous shopping trolleys with groceries. I had no supplies at home. There was panic, unbelievable queues. People were grabbing everything. I mostly bought canned food, grains, salt, sugar, and fifteen kilos of meat. I rolled the two huge trolleys right up to my building and unloaded them. Of course, I returned them to the shop afterwards,” he recalls.

After the initial shock of the invasion, Ihor began studying which foods and medicines to stockpile, and how much food and water would be required to live alone for a month or more. “I read up about what the first 10 steps should be in case of war or apocalypse.” When he went shopping the second time, he took his time and bought alcohol and several cartons of cigarettes. “I don’t drink or smoke,” he says, “I bought it all to exchange,” explaining that alcohol and cigarettes would likely become a currency substitute that could be exchanged for essentials.

He also paid particular attention to medicines. He bought antibiotics, vitamins, painkillers, fever reducers, a tourniquet, and potassium iodide, which can be used to protect the thyroid gland from radiation.

The Doomsday Cookbook

By the second day of the war, Ihor’s family had already gone abroad, leaving him alone in an empty apartment on the outskirts of a large city in western Ukraine, which he asked not to be disclosed for safety reasons. As the Russian forces began their withdrawal from the area around Kyiv, Ihor began to think seriously about his own security.

Over time, he has acquired a smoothbore shotgun, substantial stores of grains that can last for years, and tools and devices for every imaginable situation, including a gas mask, a powerful water filter capable of providing drinkable water for 20 years, and a radio receiver powered by a dynamo that can pick up signals from hundreds of kilometres away.

Next, Ihor decided to build his own shelter.

About a kilometre from his home, he found an abandoned cellar. Four metres underground, it maintains a constant temperature of 12 degrees year-round. To make it habitable, he needed to install ventilation, a sewage system and hook it up to the power grid. Over several months, Ihor cleared out the rubbish, cleaned the walls and floor, dried everything thoroughly and laid down some tiles, transforming the old cellar into his personal bunker.

“There are no documents for the cellar, and the land itself doesn’t belong to anyone. According to the cadastral maps, it once belonged to a collective farm that no longer exists. They used to store beets there. I never found the owner,” he says.

Now the bunker consists of two rooms: in the first, there are two beds and storage space for food and water; in the second, a two-square-metre area, there is a makeshift toilet. Ihor designed a special water disposal system: “All the waste goes into a forty-litre canister. When it fills up, the contents are pumped out to the surface,” he says.

The main difficulty was ensuring a supply of fresh air underground, but he found a solution. “I installed a plastic pipe with filters that leads to the surface. The pipe draws in air, you just need to switch on the intake every three or four hours, for about five minutes.”

“Your bunker won’t save you,” people often tell Ihor. He replies that in the event of a nuclear strike, the missiles won’t fall every hundred metres — there’s a chance the impact will be far away. In that case, the main danger would not be the explosion itself but the radiation and ensuing chaos.

“After three days, radiation levels drop by 60%. Our task is to stay in the bunker for at least a week. Most people will die because they won’t be able to protect themselves. Those who survive will face shortages of food and water. Then new problems will arise: looters will come in search of supplies,” he predicts.

But simply surviving the first week is not enough. “It’s like getting into university and actually graduating — two completely different things,” Ihor jokes. Survivors will have to defend themselves and their families every day. Ihor believes looters will band together and take whatever they can find, so if you don’t have a family, you should find allies nearby — not just companions, but people with skills, such as a doctor or someone with combat experience. “We need to be mutually useful to each other,” he says.

Survival, he adds, depends not only on weapons and essential supplies, but also treats such as chocolate, soft drinks, and sweets. Ihor keeps several books in his bunker: high school chemistry, physics, geography, and biology textbooks, along with field guides to mushrooms and herbs. “Be sure to take paper maps, as well as joke books or crosswords puzzles to keep your mind occupied and have a laugh,” he says.

Equipping a bunker is not cheap. “Repairs and materials cost about $500, plumbing another $300, food and medicine around $1,500, a shotgun $300, and an inverter generator $1,200,” Ihor estimates. “About $4,000 in total — that’s the entire investment necessary if you want to survive Armageddon.” He admits that people used to laugh at him, but now they are more understanding: “Good on him, he’s prepared.”

On the other hand, a bunker isn’t the only option. Many Ukrainians have chosen to leave the country, legally or by paying smugglers. But Ihor says he’ll stay in Ukraine, even if the borders — which have been closed to Ukrainian men of military age since 2022 — open. He is exempt from military service because he takes care of his elderly father and cannot abandon him: “I’m not hiding from the recruitment office, my papers are all in order, and I always carry my military ID. I feel calm, knowing they won’t take me tomorrow. There’s no need to run.”