I haven't seen the news in the last couple days, but is something going on that made you ask this question?
You need to be 36-48" under dirt to survive the fallout. You will not survive the initial blast if you are close enough. The blast wave travels at 1000-2000 mph. Unless of course you had several minutes to get underground before the blast, and even then, you would need to be more than 5-10 miles away to realistically survive in any normal shelter. You are not going to find a hardened blast proof shelter (like the white house and pentagon have) in this area probably. If the blast is more than 10 miles away, and you get inside the shelter more than 36" under ground within 10-30 minutes, you would probably survive. Once inside though, you would most likely have to stay in there for 4-10 days (depending on the distance from the blast, wind direction, etc) before venturing outside. And even then, you would want to limit outside exposure based on a variety of factors. This gets pretty complicated, and requires dosimeters, too much to go into here.
I doubt if my HOA would let me build a shelter. Perhaps they would if they were included to use it. Then they would want me to stock it with steak, champagne, etc.
You would be required to clean up your property from the explosion debris before you could continue to use the shelter under Article 2093 Section A Subsection 102 of the covenants.
At least half of the surplus radiation Civil Defense radiation detectors you see available for sale are useless for you. They are designed for the cities where there was a direct impact and therefore if the radiation is detected on the scale you are dead, but are just not quite there yet.
I agree heaven is a better choice.... But back home, the schools had basements that were bomb shelters/radiation shelters. I remember asking my teacher what the symbol meant. (Elementary school) I suppose most places around here would have been built above ground due to water table. So we are screwed if Russia targeted Raleigh. Though I imagine it would go like this: DC/Norfolk, NYC, Chicago, Boston, Philly, and work its way west, hitting major military installations along the way.
Targets - Bragg, Pope, Cherry Point, New River, Seymour Johnson, Lejeune, just to name a few in NC. It's also possible they might target nuclear reactors that are near populations. It wouldn't just be about killing as many as possible, but more about crippling our infrastructure and our military response. In which case RDU and Shearon Harris might become secondary targets. But I agree, unless it's a full out war where everything is launched, the Triangle would be pretty far down the list as far as targets. It ranks the 29th largest "Combined statistical area" or metro area in the US. In the case of an all out war though, where everything is launched by everyone, there would be no point in surviving. Russia currently has over 2500 warheads, with another 2000+ that could possibly be made usable again. About 1500 of these are ready to be launched from various methods, including submarines that are probably parked only a few hundred miles off our coasts. Most of these are in the 500 kiloton range, just one of these has enough potential to destroy most of Raleigh. So basically, if Russia launched 10% if their "ready to launch" warheads against the US, it would wipe out the largest 100 cities and most of their infrastructure. Death tolls would be in the 10-50 million range at least, and the US would take a decade or more to even get remotely back on our feet. Better to probably go in the initial blast than to try and survive here afterwards. If you had time, best to go to Canada, maybe Yukon territory lol.
When Bragg does drills the windows in my Home rattle, even though we are more than 20 miles away, if this happens I am counting on them melting.
I know some people here will razz me for just saying I am from New Jersey. But growing up 12 miles as the crow flies from mid town Manhattan, I could remember in grade school having to do those siren alerts, where we had to crawl under our desks. And my desk was always right next to the windows.
Something I looked into years ago was buying an old ICBM silo and turning it into a home. It should be safe in case of an attack. http://www.silohome.com/