The Blast Shelter

[ Reading time: 3 - 5 minutes ]

Come Inside my Project

By Richard A. Fleetwood – January 2002

Way back in 1996, when I first got on the internet, I knew absolutely nothing about webpages, webdesign, internet communications, or anything on the web. I had run a BBS on a tiny toy computer (48k of memory) years and years before, but the web was something knew. Within a few months, I started playing with my very first, very tiny, personal webpage. Interesting, and useful….the BBS background starting coming back and I found that I was getting the urge again…the urge to SHARE.

Why did I choose the topics of survival and preparedness for my first web SITE? Probably has a lot to do with surviving SEVERAL close calls with nature, dodgeing some real bullets in a 10 year career as a letter carrier on the mean streets of Birmingham, Alabama, and the fact that I had always liked the fact that by being prepared for things…anything…you can get a lot further in life, no matter who or what is throwing the curve.

Stepping into the interesting arena of civil defense, along with all aspects of natural hazards, nuclear war, terrorism, and even more disturbing things, was natural. My main concern was shelter from tornadoes, as we had WAY to many close calls with them in Alabama. Tornado shelter info was very hard to find, but find it I did. Very little of it, though. I did start coming across reference to fallout shelters in my “shelter” searches, and started looking into the techical aspects of them. Made sense, since nuclear shelters in many cases were capable of protecting from blast winds of hundreds of miles per hour from nuclear detonations in tests.

Many years later, with many thousands of dollars spent on collectible material, computer hardware, computer software, books, videos, and more, plus thousands and thousands of hours of research in every possible venue….on and offline…and I have created the single BIGGEST personal collection of civil defense material *I* know to exist. Well, guess what….this page is to show you a small portion of this huge collection to get an idea of just HOW I am getting these things online to YOU.

The pictures below were taken during a recent business trip to Denver…training for my new career managing one of a chain of stores for one of the largest, multinational, service corporations in the world. My ideas for my site and my goals in life are have the ability to create content on a moments notice…recording ideas and thoughts WHEN I have them….and to be able to digitize ANYTHING I can in the genre I have chosen. I have a portable system that I can take with me anywhere I find documents…where I can’t remove them from their source, I can record them right there. The system consists of HP laptop, a Canon flatbed scanner, a very small Aiptek USB digital camera with video streaming capability, and a couple of large sized padded computer bags to haul the “stuff:” in.

More images will come as time, and projects allow. I am about to move upstate and commute home on weekends, in a career enhancing move that my family will allow me to persue. It will give me some more time to work on the projects as mentioned on my websites, as well as more quite time to create an even MORE expansive and useful base of information in entirely new areas and directions…still all connected with teaching and showing everyone how to be safe, stay prepared, and grow skills.

So…enough verbiage for now. Below are just a small handfull of images for you to see a little portion of what I have for you. Explanations will be below each image of what you are seeing.

Comments welcome, and suggestions. Thanks to everyone who, so far, has supported me and this site in making it one of the LARGEST portal sites in the world for preparedness issues.

Richard Fleetwood

Founder – SurvivalRing, Civil Defense Now, and The Blast Shelter.

For more info, and images of what kind of files are coming, visit this link…

http://www.survivalring.org/cd-project.htm

Again, your comments are welcome.