War is the single most unproductive economic activity known to date, en par with environmental pollution. But while we still have not figured out how to prevent the emergence of warring activities, could there be a way to transform war preparation efforts into something that is also useful during times of peace? After all, the physical principles that enable the massive destruction of livelihood also have the potential to protect from many naturally occurring hazards.
Build missile and rocket storage facilities in a way they can double as delivery systems for projectiles that can immediately be fired at incoming asteroids when there is no enemy threat that requires fitting the weapons to delivery systems like aircraft. Scientists at the Los Alamos National Laboratory simulated nuclear explosions directed at asteroids to deflect the object trajectory (https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/PSJ/ad0838/pdf).
Fitted with landing gear and braking parachutes, decommissioned cruise missiles could find use in time-critical courier delivery. Development already done on the JDAM guidance kit that makes unguided bombs “smart” could serve as a starting point. The SSM-N-8 Regulus I and SSM-N-9 Regulus II cruise missiles of the Cold War era were fitted with landing gear during testing to enable them to return, landing like planes on a runway.
Civil shelters (also in private homes / public or commercial buildings) can serve a dual purpose as shelters for wartime and natural threats like storms (homesteads in the Tornado Alley of the US Mid-West sometimes have them, while cyclone-prone areas in tropical regions could certainly benefit) or, a less likely event, asteroids. A prime example of dual use is Peking, where during the summer of 2023, with its unprecedented heat waves, they opened shelters for people looking to escape the extremely high temperatures outside.
Old design documents are still available from the US government: https://dahp.wa.gov/sites/default/files/FamilyShelterDesigns.pdf
In Peking, where each building is required to have underground shelters even today, and an estimated 1 million people live in dwellings built into former shelters dating from the 1960s and 1970s, a time when the threat of nuclear war between communist China and the Soviet Republic seemed imminent (Sino-Soviet border conflict along the Ussuri river in 1969). Construction of the 85 square kilometer wide complex dubbed “Nuclear City” was completed in 1979.
China stores ICBMs in 5000 km of underground tunnels. https://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/china/underground-great-wall.htm One must wonder if the massive numbers of unfinished, uninhabited buildings constructed in recent years are just a disguise.
Appropriate shielding requires use of high-density concrete containing baryte or magnetite to shield against gamma radiation, or boron in the form of borate minerals or to be effective against neutron radiation. Elevator shafts are made from high-density concrete to reduce noise emissions. Crane counterweights are also made from this type of concrete. While 80 % of global baryte production is currently used for drilling fluids in fossil fuel exploration, civil shelters are a better use of the material.
Existing Swiss shelter building codes need a closer look: do they require use of radiation-shielding high-density concrete? If not, their strategy has major flaws.
https://www.babs.admin.ch/de/publikservice/downloads/schutzbauten.html
Neutron bombs have been described as humane weapons which only affect humans (or, by extension, biological lifeforms) while leaving infrastructure such as buildings and equipment intact.
What remains unstated are the effects of neutron activation, where elements in the vicinity of the explosion absorb the neutrons and become radioactive themselves, emitting gamma radiation.
A comprehensive table of neutron activation energies for many elements can be found at:
http://cds.cern.ch/record/111089/files/IAEA-TR-273.pdf
Further, https://www.oecd-nea.org/upload/docs/application/pdf/2019-12/volume19.pdf
Also, look into ISO 14152 for neutron absorption.
https://www-nds.iaea.org/tm-fzk/docs_slides/Forrest_EASY_IFMIF.ppt
Ventilation in Swiss-style shelters relies on a hand-cranked system if the power goes out. This means that in order for people to be able to sleep during the length of the required sheltering period, which could be 4-5 weeks, there must be several people occupying the shelter. In order to alleviate this restriction, build hydroponic systems into the shelters, where the plants / algae provide oxygen, and fish provide food. During peacetime, those systems can be part of a local food chain.
https://www.antoniofaccilongo.com/atomic-rooms
Building resilient underground structures that incorporate large-scale facilities would make civil shelters feasible at scale and double as structure for peacetime housing.
Soviet-era closed cities still exist in Russia today and serve as proof that such concepts do work.
Manufacturers of tunnel boring machines like Herrenknecht or Aker Solutions could find additional business in the construction of fallout shelters in built-up areas.
Underground facilities for large-scale particle physics experiments such as the Large Hadron Collider at CERN already contain high-density concrete in critical sections of the design. When old accelerators at CERN are dismantled, the remaining tunnels could be turned into a shelter superstructure. However, this is an unlikely scenario, as the LHC will continue to serve as an accelerator stage for future, even larger particle accelerators.
Ultrasonic drilling could also find applications.
Since the height of the Cold War, fallout shelters have been reduced in numbers. The current situation with Russia threatening Ukraine shows that this may have been a mistake.
So what could be a more sustainable approach to building fallout shelters?
Looking to Scandinavia and Switzerland, where large shelters are built into underground parking and recreational facilities for use during peace time.
Manufacturers of fuel storage tanks could use available production capacity to build shelters from the same geometrical designs which can then be buried underground on private property to provide basic shelter. In times when there is concern for public safety, e.g. when unexploded ordnance is found nearby, residents could shelter in place instead of having to be moved to a special safe location.
During the Cold War, German motorways were built to function as airstrips with the middle lane separators removed, and rest areas along highways doubling as aircraft parking. Those road sections featured reinforced surfaces in order to handle the higher weights of aircraft compared to cars and trucks.
Ventilation equipment of large bunker structures could serve as direct air capture inlets during peaceful times, diverting the air intake away from wartime sand filter units to carbon dioxide scrubbers, this way aiding in the climate change recovery effort.
Light-gas projectiles
Attach a thin-walled cartridge containing pressurized hydrogen gas to the bottom of a projectile to achieve propulsion velocities exceeding the Earth’s escape velocity.
Re-manufacture surplus shaped charges and kinetic energy penetrators to be used with Voitenko compressors for aerospace applications.