They're is talk of another arms race

Both the US and Russia seem to be scrambling assets for war and conducting drills. The US is doing it more quietly. You have to look past the media, and look at government agency funding and training announcements for clues here, or get it from the grapevine, Other countries are also preparing to get caught in the crossfire.

I built and stocked a fallout shelter this month, and started carrying a gas mask. Nobody from the government or the mainstream media is warning the American people. I try warning friends/family and they look at me like I have three heads.

It seems like too premature a construction. I doubt we're this close to nuclear war...

I also own a gas mask and yeah I'd consider a Nuclear fall out design, and not because I'm afraid simply because I am interested in the information. It seems hardly possible that Science won't enter the funds and research to be a situation more Nuclear tesing. It's been a long time since that time and the US still hold the hand, like Nuclear power generation. Did you know how many years it takes to build one nuclear generator, I think it's Korea with the quickest deployment in scale right now, so how do you stop the progress.

For a fallout shelter, the basic idea is to put thick things between you and the radioactive dust that falls down. Most dangerous exposure is breathing it, but after that it would be proximity to the dust while it's radioactive. So even if the dust isn't on your skin (if it is, wash it off and put the dirty water away from you) it is also no good if it's on your clothes or just on the other side of a window from you, etc. Air attenuates radiation (i.e. distance) but dense material attenuates it more.

Bags of sand or dirt, cinder blocks, even boxes of books or stacks of newspapers would be a help. The idea is to make a sort of igloo out of anything like these things, and stay in it. If you don't have room to build one in your basement you can take your kitchen table into the middle of a room that isn't too drafty and surround it with boxes of books, and put thick things on top of it. After 48 hours, the radiation is 1% of what it is in the first hour, but you want to stay in your shelter as much as you can for 2 weeks. It's the first few days that is the most important for you to just stay put in the igloo all the time. You could go out for like 15 minutes or something like that after a week.

With that in mind, you need food, water, something to lie on, and some kind of toilet setup in or near your shelter. You'll want to have a little air circulation through a filter, like a furnace filter or something. I would wear a gas mask at least the first 48 hours. That is hard to do. I get a hair in there on my face, and it's annoying as heck, even for just an hour.

@Dr. Roy, it cost me around $60 to build the shelter, I used an old workbench and cinder blocks. Not bad for a po' girl.

It's like you live in the Cold War era, still

It never really ended, yo