Composed of dozens of school buses surrounded with concrete, there may not be room for two of every Earthly animal in this “Ark Two” but there is space for around 500 humans (kids and adults) to cohabitate through a moderate apocalypse.

Located in Horning’s Mills (in case you need to get there in an emergency) on the edge of Toronto, Canada, this remarkable shelter features 10,000 feet of subterranean space. The resulting mega-structure is the largest known private fallout shelter on the North American continent.

Bruce and Jean Beach, a local couple, live on adjacent land and built their underground bunker to last, encasing a series of interconnected buses in solid concrete. As it turns out: a derelict bus is cheap, costing just a few hundred dollars, but its reinforced steel frame makes it a strong candidate to be used for a mold. The buses are carefully aligned to create sequential spaces serving different key functions.

And it wasn’t just built for the pair of them: it is equipped with a well and plumbing, kitchen and laundry areas, even spaces dedicated for doctors and daycare centers (complete with emergency and surgery rooms). The couple constructed the place decades ago, not so much as a space for immediate survival but an outpost from which the world could be built in a post-nuclear age.

The complex doesn’t have a permit, which has landed its builders in court on more than one occasion, but officials seem largely content to let them be at this point. Meanwhile, Cold War or not, the dedicated couple (now well into their 80s) continue to build up supplies and prepare the space for uncertain futures. It may yet pay off.

Filling shotgun shells with flower seeds is just the latest (and loudest) in a long line of designs for guerrilla gardeners. If you are looking for a little less bang for your buck than seed-swapped buckshot, you may wan to try a seed ball, bomb or grenade instead, all a bit more stealthy despite their loud-sounding names.

One throw-and-grow option for the concrete jungle is this compostable-shelled Flower Grenade packed with ryegrass, buttercups and poppies. This hardy custom-tailored mix is designed to flower in sequence for a multi-week, time-delay effect well beyond the ten seconds or so of their traditional wartime relatives.

Another cleverly-titled approach comes from Greenaid, a group intent on seeding the urban landscape with converted gumball machines rejigged to dispense seed bombs instead of sweets. Put in a quarter and receive a ball made of clay, compost and seeds to help you compact dull gray vacant lots and faded green parking medians.

These Greenaid creations are uniquely tailored to provide local wildflowers native to the areas in which they are deployed – in LA, for instance, they contain White Yarrow, California Poppy, Lupine and Blue Flax.

There are lots of other options, too, from region-oriented seed balls for sale on sites like Etsy to do-it-yourself instructions or kits to help you build your own. When it comes to guerrilla gardening, the real trick is understanding your environment and purpose, then strategically finding a solution for that particular context.

For many of the world’s citizens (and travelers), the threat of bodily harm from war or terror attacks is a daily fact of life. Constructed of bulletproof material, this backpack is designed to reduce the risk of personal injury in unstable regions.

Dubbed Rhino Skin (part of Second-Chance Gear) and designed by Hadassah College graduate Hila Raam, the pack’s back and side straps pull forward and wrap around the wearer to form bulletproof vest.

On top, a likewise projectile-and-debris-resistant hood can be deployed when one hits the proverbial deck upon hearing an air raid siren, helping shield the wearer, if warned, from additional shrapnel injuries.

While it will not do much in some  extreme, close-proximity situations (where nothing short of full body armor would help), it does cover the head and torso, protecting vital organs and reducing damage potential from rocket, mortar or bomb strikes.

From the designer: the Rhino Skin is “a modular backpack combining kevlar used as a civilian personal protection system in
countries or areas that are under daily attacks, protecting against debris and impact created from missile and rocket attacks.This unique bag pack protects the essential life or death body areas … the head, neck, back and the sides of the body. Most important the brain, heart, liver and kidneys are fully protected.”

One pleasant spring day in 1955, an atomic bomb blasted an American city into oblivion. This is the story of Survival Town, a purpose-built collection of structures, buildings, even mannequins designed to measure the effects of an atomic weapon used against urban centers. Its optimistic name notwithstanding, Survival Town was destined to become, in a flash, Loserville.

Operation Teapot Steams Up The Desert

(images via: Weird Wild Realm and Deseret News)

It can get hot in Nevada, but 1955 saw temps in selected areas reach that of the surface of the sun. In a roughly three month period in the spring of that year, the U. S. Army set off 14 nuclear explosions at the Nevada Test Site at Yucca Flats under the name of Operation Teapot. The explosions ranged in yield from 1.2 to 43 kilotons. The bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, ten years earlier had a yield of approximately 12 kilotons.

Home Sweet… Uh Oh

(image via: Wired)

The stage was set for Survival Town two years earlier when, on the first day of tests for Operation Upshot-Knothole, the charming 1950’s house above was exposed to an atomic blast. The walls of the house look unnaturally bright in the first image (above top left) because they’re reflecting the light of the just-detonated bomb. The rest, as they say, is history.

“Honey, Call State Farm”

(image via: Corbis)

The Apple-2 test on May 5, 1955… yes, 5/5/55, showed similar results to the 1953 structures and materials test. Civil Defense workers provide a composite Before & After photo of one of the homes built to be destroyed in what is known today as Operation CUE. This rare color photo was taken on May 6, 1955.

Nobody Home, Gone Fission

(image via: Spectrum)

The stark set of photos above shows another Survival Town building that sustained a somewhat less degree of damage – in other words, it wasn’t pulverized into kindling. The Army set up a variety of homes, buildings and other structures at varying distances from Ground Zero in an effort to determine how the power of an atomic blast would carry over an urban landscape.

This video of the “Survival Town Atom Test” is at once cute and creepy, backed by over-the-top melodramatic monster-movie music. Note that “a million dollars worth of equipment was installed”. Who planned this test, Doctor Evil??

Eve Of Destruction

(images via: Nebraska Studies, Curiositas Mundi and OSU Library)

Survival City had it all: homes, buildings, electrical power lines, even people… well, fake people. Got to give the DOD some credit here, they stocked the homes with mannequins sourced from J. C. Penney. On a somewhat freaky note, the Army posed the mannequins in the acts of playing, eating and so on; then left cameras on to record the “fun” that was about to ensue.

Cue The Bomb

(images via: Postapocalypse, Vegaslandfill and National Archives)

The May 5th explosion dubbed Apple-2 took place 9 days late as the test site had been experiencing high winds. When the all-clear was finally given at 8:10am, nearby residents (and those who were tuning live on radio and TV) witnessed an atomic explosion weighing in at 31 kilotons. The explosion’s blast area extended 3 miles out from Ground Zero. Most of the approximately 6,000 spectators watched from about 6 miles away but Army troops in tanks and trenches got a birds-eye view at a mere 2 to 3 miles from the epicenter.

Gosh Mom, We’re Havin’ A Blast!

(images via: Flashpoint)

These rare color photos bring “home” the surreal horror of the mannequin tests with a bit more clarity. Once again the attention to detail is almost disturbing as it shows a typical, “Leave It To Beaver” type family engaged in typical middle-American pursuits, frozen in time just before their demise.

Behlen Buildings Bounce Back

(images via: Nebraska History and Nebraska Studies)

If one recalls anything about the mannequins & materials tests of the early Atomic Age, it’s the exploding houses – they make good visuals. At the time, however, survival was on the nation’s collective mind and though the test subjects of Operation Cue were inanimate, there WERE heroes among them. One of the most celebrated was the Behlen building, a corrugated steel structure that suffered not much more than the odd dent even though it was placed just 6,800 feet from Ground Zero. Behlen got a lot of mileage out of Operation Cue – the building was trucked around to state fairs for years after. The B&W photo above shows the building at the 1955 Nebraska State Fair.

Survival Town Survivors

(images via: Nevada Test Site Tour and Travelrag)

(images via: Seattle Times, Skyscraper City and Auroral Chorus)

You’d think the Army would have destroyed any and all traces of Survival Town once Operation Cue had wound down, but surprisingly some of the buildings remain standing today. The Nevada Department Of Energy conducts tours of the entire test area (no cameras allowed) including the remains of Survival Town, though visitors must be over the age of 14 and pregnant women are advised not to attend – not out of concern for any lingering radioactivity, but due to the long and bumpy bus ride.

(image via: Maison Bisson)

Survival Town, USA… wish you were here?