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Well, seeing as we’re only seven months into 2020 and we’ve already done the plague
thing, the recession thing, the Brexit thing, the murder hornet thing, the assassination
of a foreign leader thing, the Australia burning to the ground thing, the police brutality
except police brutality has actually been rampant for decades thing, and, worst of all,
the Trolls World Tour thing, I’d say we’re well overdue for an exchange of nuclear warheads
thing.
Now, if Russia gets fed up with all that tedious election-rigging in November and decides to
go for a more direct approach, there are a few things you need to keep in mind if you
want to survive a nuclear blast.
Firstly, depending on where you are and where the missile is being launched from, you’ll
have anywhere from 10-45 minutes to prepare—in the case of Hawaii’s missile scare in 2018,
officials estimate that Hawaiians would’ve had about 12 minutes between the accidental
push notification warning of Hawaii’s fiery demise and Hawaii’s actual fiery demise.
Now, with that 10-45 minutes, the rest is easy: don’t look directly at the explosion,
stay inside a reinforced concrete building, ingratiate yourself into the tribe of mutant
squirrel people that rule the fallout-ravaged hell-scape, but most importantly—wait, is
this video all intro?
Do we ever get to a topic or… ok, well, most importantly the only thing that will
guarantee your survival is to simply duck and cover… just kidding.
This isn’t an early 1950s PSA meant to stimulate children with ineffectual survival tips in
order to stoke the public’s fear of global Communism, this is Half as Interesting!
Here we only give you real survival tips that we read about on Wikipedia, and we all know
that in reality, the only thing that will guarantee your survival is to dig a massive
underground city built to house millions of people in the event of a nuclear war.
Coincidentally, that’s exactly what China did under Beijing in 1969.
Now, it’s easy to forget that there are parts of world history that don’t include
the United States, but believe it or not, the Cold War wasn’t just an audition for
“America’s Next Top Nuclear Warhead Target”—there were lots of other countries with their own
missiles and their own post-war tensions.
Even China and the Soviet Union had their differences—some ideological spats, a few
border disputes, and a teeny tiny 7 month military conflict where a few hundred troops
were killed.
Knowing that things can get kind of sticky when you’ve started gunning down Soviet
soldiers, Mao got to work digging one of the largest bunker systems ever designed.
And by “Mao got to work,” I really mean “300,000 Beijingers, including maybe, possibly
a few schoolchildren, got to work digging 33 square miles worth of tunnels by hand while
Mao was chilling in his imperial palace.”
The resulting shelter was equipped not only with living spaces, but with restaurants,
schools, medical facilities, factories, grain warehouses, movie theaters, roller skating
rinks, and a mushroom cultivation farm—basically, all the amenities I have in my giant YouTube
mansion, and yes, that includes the grain warehouses; I like to have a lot of grain
on hand, okay?
Now, in the event of an impending nuclear strike on Beijing, any resident could pop
into one of 90 entrances strategically placed around the city to access the shelter—theoretically,
Beijing’s underground city would be able to house all six million inhabitants for about
four months, at which point they could be safely released into the apocalypse, fresh
and rejuvenated.
Of course, digging an underground city isn’t exactly a weekend project, and Sino-Soviet
relations were in a much better place when the project was completed 10 years later in
1979.
There was no longer any worry of bombs, or gas, or bombs filled with gas so that when
they explode they release gas everywhere, so the completed underground city was, fortunately,
never used… well, at least for its intended purpose.
You see, when Mao stepped down in 1976, and by stepped down I mean “died,” he was
replaced by this guy: Deng Xiaoping.
Deng was much less interested in ideology than Mao, and much more focused on expanding
China’s economy, so like any good capitalist, when he realized that there were tens of thousands
of unused living spaces under China’s second most populous city, he did what Google did
to our browser histories and ordered them to be commercialized.
Slowly, Beijing’s underground city was transformed into a collection of underground markets,
office spaces, hostels, and ultra-affordable housing.
In fact, over a million people currently live under Beijing in these renovated bomb shelters
that are often cramped, windowless, and poorly-maintained—they’re sort of like college dorm rooms, if college
dorm rooms were bigger and affordable.
This underground society, which some locals refer to as “The Rat Tribe,” is mostly
composed of young Chinese immigrants from other provinces looking to start new lives
in the city without worrying too much about housing costs.
Most of these rooms can be rented for around 400 yuan a month—that’s the equivalent
of 57 US dollars, which, in New York, can get you one night in a haunted AirBnB or about
45 minutes in a nice one-bedroom apartment.
Now, although nearly 5% of Beijing’s population lives underground, they need to do so in relative
secrecy—while most local officials usually turn a blind eye, these dwellings are all
actually technically illegal, since the Chinese government forbids anyone from living full-time
in the underground city.
I mean, after all, what’s more dangerous than living in the most elaborate bomb shelter
ever built?
Now, before the nuclear Armageddon comes, you should be sure to be prepared to make
your days waiting out the end times productive.
Remember: the end of life as you know it is the perfect opportunity to learn the basics
of cinematography, or basic watercolor techniques, or how to make the perfect grilled cheese
sandwich.
Now, for all of this, you need Skillshare.
That’s because not only do they have a seemingly endless catalogue of classes on anything and
everything, but they also have an app where you can download classes offline.
Of course, if you’re thinking, I don’t have enough time to learn new skills, first
of all, wrong—most classes are under 60 minutes and are broken into small segments—and
second of all, you could use Skillshare to learn how to create enough time to use Skillshare
with a class like the Productivity Masterclass by Thomas Frank—who’s a friend of mine,
so maybe recommending his class will convince him to buy me a sandwich or something.
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