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Hank said. “Ten square feet per person is the minimum allowed in government sponsored fallout shelters, with a minimum height of six and a half feet. The height wouldn’t be a problem. I don’t see all of us in a building with only six hundred twenty square feet. More like sixty-two hundred square feet. A hundred square feet per person. But that could include interior storage space and all that, too.”

“But like Pete said,” Frank said, “What about visitors that might be here during something like that?”

“Call it a hundred people, and ten-thousand square feet,” Pete said immediately. “If we square up the sides of the ravine, the building could be fifty feet wide, two-hundred feet long. It would take a lot of columns to support the roof. And the dirt we take from the sides of the ravine to make that space should be enough to cover it with at least three feet of earth.”

“You have any idea what that would cost?” asked Sara. “Our house is only thirty-two hundred square feet and… well… It cost in the mid-three figures. A ten-thousand square foot building would cost a million or more!”

“Not anywhere near,” Henry said. “I don’t plan to help pay for gold faucets and granite countertops. It’ll just be open space enclosed in concrete, wouldn’t it?” He looked at Pete and then Hank.

“Something like that,” Hank said. “Probably a series of wood framed walls inside, giving each family a private enclosed area, plus shared common room, baths, kitchen, and storage areas. Say thirty twelve-by-fifteen rooms for our residents, plus what visitors might be at anyone’s given household at the time we had to use the shelter. Including hallway space, that would take up seventy-two hundred square feet, leaving approximately twenty-eight hundred for the common use rooms.”

There was much discussion among families and friends. Hank let it go on for several minutes, and then said, “What if we have the committee look into what it would cost, and what kind of time frame we would be looking at? I don’t think we should waste much time on this. If we do it, we need to do it pretty quick.”

It was unanimous. Hank and the committee would start the next day on the plans for the shelter.

Due to the increasing sense of urgency everyone was feeling, Hank called for a meeting only two weeks later. He laid out the details and the costs. There were sighs of dismay. Far from a million dollars, but still over a hundred thousand for the shell.

“What about the inside? Wiring and plumbing and all?” asked Bren.

“We’d do that ourselves as time and money permit,” Pete said. “Juan has his contractor’s license now, so we could legally do it.”

“We would do it at my cost,” Juan said. “I’d have receipts for everything.”

“Five thousand per family up front,” Hank said. “Then whatever you want to spend on your family’s room and contribute toward the common areas.”

With only one family member in attendance for the most part, spouses had to go home to talk to the other half of the relationship before committing five-thousand plus dollars to the project.

But the answers were all back by the following day. Work would start the following Wednesday.

Hank’s attempts to energize the rest of the development had fallen on mostly deaf ears. But a handful of people living outside the cul-de-sac asked to talk to the group at their next meeting. A project like the community fallout shelter couldn’t be kept secret. And it wasn’t.

Three people, representing three families and one individual, attended the first meeting after the shelter work started. All three looked nervous. There had been many hard looks turned their way since they had arrived.

“Okay, people. This is Gwen Chandler, Stan Jenkins, and Gene…” Hank stumbled on the name and Gene spoke up.

“Descartes.”
    “Gene Descartes,” Hank said, pretty much getting the pronunciation correct. “They