The Blast Shelter

[ Reading time: < 1 minute ]

It’s been a long time since I worked on this website, except for the new layout and design. It’s time that I finish uploading and freshening all the content that was originally on The Blast Shelter when it was on AOL. Don’t worry…ALL the data on the old site is backed up and safe. And, I have new content areas to add, to complete the original goals I created when I started this particular website.

Stay tuned, content IS coming soon.

Thanks to all of you, who over the years, have continued to support my website projects in every conceivable way. I appreciate it more than you’ll ever know.

Rich

[ Reading time: 3 - 4 minutes ]

This website seems to be getting tons of hits, on a lot of classic content…much of it years old.

Of this, I am happy. It proves that the content has stood the test of time. Of course, going months between adding new content and info can’t be a good thing. I’m hoping to remedy this particular situation in the short term.

In two weeks, I’ll be finishing my second college degree, exactly one year after finishing my first. In two weeks, I’ll be a dual major college graduate with two associate of applied science degrees. ; the first in Electronic Media Production, and the second in web design.

During the process of finishing these two degrees, I’ve greatly enhanced my ability to create ANY kind of digital content, including audio, video, radio and TV shows, all forms of web design including database driven and flash based content, and more. I’ve also upgraded hardware capacity for production with DigitalVideo DV cameras, a new laptop for portable production, and upgraded the power desktop system to a gig of RAM memory, DUAL dual layer DVD burners, and a total of over a terabyte of harddrive storage.

So, with these new skills, new equipment, and more time on my hands ( a full summer with no classwork) I can do a number of things…

• Complete the full conversion off ALL files and pages from the old AOL Blast Shelter website, into this new format
• A fully customized interface and web layout upgrade for this current site (theblastshelter.com)
• A unique set of interactive areas for all site visitors (you can always leave a commente on ANY posting or page on this website…just click COMMENT)
• Expansion of ideals and content areas for the Blast Shelter…all in the name of sharing info on Self Reliance
• Creation of audio and video content JUST for The Blast Shelter … Yes, totally and completely new content and knowledge based info…just for you

I’ve been doing many web projects over the past couple of years, while here in college again. Many new content items on SurvivalRing, a support page helping teens and other young people make the right choices at Young Adults Against Addiction, fallout shelter specific info at MyFalloutShelter.com, a huge upgrade to the 1998 Birmingham F-5 tornado history page, and several completely new websites, supporting a set of new CD Rom projects due out this summer.

I’m continuing my college education next fall, and will be pursuing a bachelors of science degree in Emergency Management at Upper Iowa University. I’ll be following that with a Masters in Homeland Security at the same college. Both of these future degrees will be to support my continued research in creating a new paradigm shift in Citizen Disaster Preparedness.

I’ll be using all of my websites to share my newfound knowledge, collect research material, and a lot more…so that both your knowledge grows, and my knowledge and ability to transform ideas into work will continue.

Thanks for your continued interest in, and support of, the Blast Shelter website projects, and all of my other web work.

I truly appreciate each and every email I receive from you.

[ Reading time: < 1 minute ]

I’ve spent a couple of hours this evening moving the Build A Fallout Shelter page, from the old AOL website, to this new site, and you can view the reconfigured and newly laid out page here…

Now that it’s converted, I can start updating it, with all the latest research, links, contacts, sources and more, that I’ve developed in the past four years, since I last updated the page.

Be sure to check it out, and see if you can find any typos from this conversion. Also, your comments are most welcome.

I’ll also be glad to help you with ANY questions you might have regarding fallout shelter specifics. Use the comments function for this post, or contact me directly with this form. Thanks for your interest.

Rich

[ Reading time: 1 - 2 minutes ]

Thanks for your interest in The Blast Shelter. It has been YEARS since the original AOL version of TBS has been updated. I’ve been a wee bit busy with my main site, SurvivalRing.org, which is now doing about six million hits a year now.

Everything on the original TBS site will be moved here, AND updated in the next few weeks. New content, new links, new ideas, and new paths will also come this way.

The current page you are looking at is a template package, which I will be modifying to make my own, with new graphics, new style commands and more. The WAY cool thing about this content management system called WordPress, is that YOU can comment on ANY page, any posting, or any thing you want at the click of a mouse button.

So, bear with us, as we bring The Blast Shelter into the 21st century.

Rich Fleetwood
Founder – The Blast Shelter, SurvivalRing.org, and a whole lot more.
“Saving the world, one day at a time…”

[ Reading time: 2 - 4 minutes ]

In order to give you some continuity from old site to new, I’ll be posting the last OLD updated into this section.

Rich

Site Additions… May 29th, 2001

Another little update of the huge Blast Shelter/SurvivalRing empire is here…

A lot has happened since my last update of this main page of The Blast Shelter. On April 24th, 2001, just over a month ago, my life and family and world came to a standstill. I lost my job, my home, and entered the world of “the homeless”…due to a “friend” with whom I’d invested my life savings with in a business opportunity delivering campers and rvs across country with…(see the last update below for more detail), and who decided that it just wouldn’t work, and shut the whole thing down, after I had put $14,000 of my postal retirement into the venture, with no chance of financial recovery ( his RV park is $300,000 in debt, and I’d never recover anything anyway…but at least I’m not losing any more).

It has been incredibly difficult here…we have everything in storage, except for a few clothes, the computer, and some books and small things. We have (my wife and three teens) been spending the past 5 weeks in a one room, 3 bed motel room, paid thru the 1st of June. Thanks to the support of my church, we will have a small 2 bedroom apartment to move into on June 1st, and with my new job ( please, don’t laugh, it is ALL I could find in this small 7000 person town) at McDonalds as a Crew Person with very good possibility of starting management training in a few weeks, we are starting completely over in this world, in a strange town, with just a few friends, a lot of dreams to rebuild, and a lot of hope to recover.

I never thought I would be in this position, but now that I am here, I know I will never be here again, and I also know that my family staying together and working together in the extreme tough times means more than anything. I hope you will say a few prayers for me, and continue your support of my web projects in the future.

Speaking of which, check out the very latest at

http://www.survivalring.org

including the incredible amount of information in CIVIL DEFENSE NOW. Visit it, spend time there…and share the URL and web address with EVERYONE who might find it useful. More to come as we put our home back together in our new place in the next month.

If you can offer any help or support of any kind at this time, it would be much appreciated in this low point in our little world. Thanks, to all of you, for your past interest in all my little rantings and ravings in these pages, and please, share your thoughts with us, thru the email lists, the guestbook, or emails to me. Just a few words will make my day.

Your friend in the beautiful state of Wyoming,

Richard

[ Reading time: 5 - 8 minutes ]

Site Update…March 27, 2001

By Richard Fleetwood (rafleet)

Hi again, from the highlands and mountains of Central Wyoming, as the state motto says, “Like No Place On Earth”.

It has been quite a while since the last update, and I do apologize. The best laid plans sometimes don’t work out, even when you are trying your hardest. It doesn’t help when little things like web hosts, web service providers, and other online companies buy and sell each other, change service from free to paid, alter web addresses for site extras (like webrings, guestbook, and other site enhancement items) and YOU don’t find out about it till weeks or months later after you’ve been on the road and offline for a virtual eternity.

The change from federal employee (Postal Letter Carrier of ten years) to self employed entrepreneur (hot shot over the road truck driver-coast to coast) has been tough, fraught with peril and danger, but full of unexpected excitement and unimaginable beauty and incredible sites and scenery, and I think, well worth the tough times.

Changes right now, that need fixing, are setting up again of the civil defense download library. Seems that XOOM sold out NBCi, and in so doing screwed up web addresses that used SUB-directories, which the new system can’t handle. 40+ meg of files will be uploaded to replace what was lost in the changeover, and another 40-100 meg of new stuff will go online with it, since XOOM/NBCi allow 500 megs of storage, with 11 meg maximum download filesize, which I can definitely work with. Also, Yahoo bought out webring last year, and the ring management functions have been profoundly screwed up, and I have a solution coming up to fix that as well. Other items include removing items from both sites that I can no longer stay caught up with because of being on the road weeks at a time. All will add to increased usability, enhanced site navigation, and faster download times.

What have I accomplished OFFLINE in the past 6 months or so that has anything to do with this website and upcoming additions, information, and learning material for YOU, the Blast Shelter/SurvivalRing visitor/supporter?

Well, let us start with the basics. I now have an HP Laptop computer to take with me on the road. It has taken a couple of months, setting up new and better software, recovering files from my OLD computer (486SX2 50mh), teaching myself some new tricks (dhtml, javascript, audio encoding, graphics design upgrades, SSI, and a few other things), getting new software (PhotoShop, Realproducer for realaudio production, various web design and production tools, and more), gathering more background material (nuclear safety, cold war history, self reliance data, and so on), more hardware (another power system for my wife, with 30 gig of harddrive space, 128 of ram, and finally a CD ROM burner), and other similar things.

What do these things let me do, for you? Create better and much more interesting presentation of content, using state of the art tools; offer REAL multimedia experience in sharing information, stories, and facts; create CD ROMS of my original work, scanned in ORIGINAL public domain goverment civil defense and preparedness material, and other like things; and, of course, increase everyones preparedness quotient by having great material all in one place.

Other things I have had to deal with in the past half year have direct bearing on SURVIVAL and PREPAREDNESS. In switching careers and moving cross country, my family gave up a LOT of things we were comfortable with, changed our lifestyles, and live a much simpler, and decidedly much more frugal, life. I also have had to put into REAL practice both theoretical and long unused (not for lack of want) skills to simply stay safe and alive while driving the equivalant of almost 2 and a half trips around the world in this new job. Horrible storms, unheard of road conditions, the worlds worst drivers in the nations biggest cities, errant wildlife, and truck breakdowns in the literal middle of nowhere (how about the middle of the Mojave Desert for fun?)

Some of my stories are written ( ready to put online ). Others are floating around in my head waiting for a little bit of quiet time to get them typed in. Some are wonderfully exciting, with personal thoughts of the majestic grandeur of the landscape of this nation’s most well known, and least known, places. Others are horrifyingly fearsome, with details of honest to God life and death experiences of the past year. I promise you all that they are worth a few minutes of your time to read and ponder. As with anything I put on my sites of a personal nature, I put them there for YOU to think about, and to wonder yourself, “what would *I* do in a situation like this?”.

Most things I have needed to do to get caught up after this move, and so much time on the road, are done. Some, like creating a full blown self sufficient RV out of a 40 foot 1995 flat nosed Blue Bird School Bus which we now own, still need to be done (this project to be FULLY documented for all of you, and trust me, I know what I’m doing here….I put myself thru college doing this for a living). Many other real world projects are in work, and all have something to do with skill building, self sufficiency, and confident readiness for the future. I will share all with you.

A word here on DIRECTION, before I close this update to you, my friends all over the world. From the beginning, this site and SurvivalRing have been about BEING PREPARED. If you are familiar with me, my sites, and my goals already, you KNOW that I don’t cover just a few simple survival areas. I consider EVERYTHING, from natural disasters, to nuclear war, from terrorism, to household accidents, from catastrophic planetary annihilation via comets and asteroids, to falling off your chair and breaking your arm. ALL these threats, and more, are out there, and as one of Rush Limbaugh’s little satirical commercials says, “It Could Happen!”. Whether it WILL happen, or not, ANY of these threats, remains to be seen. Preparedness for ANY of these, is in essence, preparedness for ALL of these and more.

Take preparedness seriously. Always. Never let your guard down in good times or bad. Lives change, and end, in the blink of an eye, or in a fraction of a heartbeat. My goal is to help YOU be ready, or avoid being there in the first place when it hits the fan.

Stay Tuned. The world is changing everyday, and this website is going to help you stay ahead. Site updates will happen at every opportunity, and this quest of mine to save the world, one person at a time, will continue….NO MATTER WHAT.

Your friend and Brother in Preparedness,
Richard Fleetwood
Founder – The Blast Shelter, and SurvivalRing

[ Reading time: 2 - 4 minutes ]

NEW! Happy Holidays to all visitors from the Fleetwood family. Jump over to our Greetings page for a short message from all of us!! Good for ANY season!

NEW! With so much responce to me regarding SurvivalRing, media need for Y2k contacts, and people wanting to help, I’ve created a new page Y2k Media Help. Editors from TIME, NEWSWEEK, LIFE Magazine, and TV shows and news reporters have made contact in places all over the country, with help from my contacts and friends. The goal? To help spread the “IDEA” of being PREPARED for ANYTHING, not just Y2k. Will you help?

UPDATED! I have fixed the LDS Prophecy and Preparedness pages, which have had some color clash problems making their reading very difficult. They should be nice and clean and easy to read now, and I also added some linkage between all the pages for reading enjoyment. Comments are welcome, and a couple of new files will be added shortly.

Stay informed! The one and only BLAST SHELTER email discussion list. This is a new way for all visitors to the site to discuss questions, thoughts, ideas, suggestions, or concerns about this website, its topics, and its message to the world. Once you subscribe to the list after filling out a small questionaire, all messages sent to the email address theblastshelter@listbot.com will be forwarded to you. I subscribe to MANY other mailing lists and news services, and when really juicy stuff comes thru, I will forward it to this list to be dispersed to those interested soles who wish to stay on top of things in this way. Sign up right here….

Be Alert! An article about the April 1998 Tornado disaster in Birmingham, Alabama on 4/8/98, of which I was more then just a spectator. Graphics, photos, info, and survival information may be found here.

Information about an exciting new addition to The Blast Shelter website – The nation and the worlds FINEST collection of U.S. Civil Defense information. Its coming, and boy will it be a doozy…and a NEW webring!

How to contact me if I’m online and you’d like to chat, here’s a novel, and quite useful way to do it.

My webring called SurvivalRing–the ORIGINAL webring for Survival and Preparedness issues. The worlds LARGEST preparedness webring, with over 730 member sites and growing bigger everyday!

Hot-Links to all my pages that presently exist on this site, a short description, its status, and the current number of visitors each page has had to date.

Links to my family’s webpages, either current or planned.

FUTURE PAGES I hope to put online someday soon.

My STANDARD disclaimer that applies to ALL pages found at this web site.