| > The rational reason we don't build nuclear shelters anymore is because they're no longer effective. The rational reason we don't build nuclear shelters anymore (which is not actually true by the way, Switzerland still builds them although they're not required anymore for private residences) is because there's very little chance of a massive nuclear war which is what they were for. > As weapon yields increased, it's become apparent that a concrete, underground hideout is not going to save you. Weapon yield has decreased, not increased. In the 50s, delivery was through bombers, you wanted big bombs because many bombers were going to be shot down so each nuke delivered had to pack as much punch as it could. Early ICBM had similar-ish issue, you had few inaccurate rockets and they had a warhead each so each warhead had to count, you built a big rocket and a big warhead on top of it, and the ones that didn't fail and weren't shot down razed a city even when they missed it by tens of miles. That's where you had multi-megaton designs With the 60s and MIRV multi-megaton went online (they'd been designed in the 50s) but systems designed in the 60s and deployed in the 70s for the exact same role all went sub-megaton, half a megaton at most, usually less, for smaller and more precise delivery platforms and MIRV systems. The most numerous warhead in the US nuclear arsenal is the 100kT W76. |