Fleeing for the Fallout Shelter

"We need to get to the Vault, NOW!"

— The Sole Survivor, Fallout 4

In settings where an apocalypse has been predicted, it may be common (or at the very least accepted) for people to build shelters just in case the worst comes to the worst. However, regardless of whether they're hastily upgraded basements or top-secret government bunkers hidden miles underground, life actually has to continue on once the shelters have been built; people have to go to work, buy groceries, return library books, and so on. Plus, most people won't actually live in their shelters, given that they tend to lack creature comforts... so it's all too easy to get caught outdoors when the air sirens begin to sound.

Thus, the Fleeing for the Fallout Shelter. If you're lucky, you're within reach of your shelter and you can make it inside before the apocalypse catches up with you. If not, you'll have to make do with any cover you can find; depending on the severity of the disaster, this may end up being fatal. Of course, just because you can reach safety doesn't mean that the shelter will remain safe for the duration of the disaster, but that's another story.

This is, of course, a hallmark of the most dramatic apocalypses, nuclear war being a popular variant, so don't expect to see too many examples of "quieter" apocalyptic events like viral outbreaks here unless they involve some form of Zombie Apocalypse.

Compare Safe Zone Hope Spot, which usually involves a much longer and less urgent journey to safety.

Please note that this is a strictly apocalyptic trope: if an incident doesn't fall under one of the headings of Apocalypse How, it doesn't belong here — ergo no mundane bombings and no examples from either of the World Wars.

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Examples

Anime & Manga

• Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin: Downplayed at the start of Operation British. Zeon had ordered the citizens of Island Effish to enter the shelters for an emergency protocol simulation. One guard is standing outside at his post and notices that it's become exceptionally cold, and crawls over to the shelter and tries to get them to open up. He soon falls asleep and dies along with everyone else in the entire colony, as Zeon had shut off the environmental controls and gassed everyone in order to carry out their Colony Drop.
• Neon Genesis Evangelion: The residents of Tokyo-3 appear to do this whenever Angels appear, which explains why so little collateral damage happens during the early battles. Most notably in Episode 3, when an Angel shows up while Shinji is at school and the other students are forced to shelter there.

Audio Plays

• In the Big Finish Doctor Who audio drama "Protect And Survive," Ace and Hex find themselves trapped in an alternate timeline where the Cold War turned nuclear, though they are lucky enough to end up in the vicinity of an older couple with a fallout shelter prepared in their basement. However, given that the couple isn't up to moving quickly, Ace and Hex are stuck helping them down the stairs — during which Hex is blinded by the flash from the bomb. All four of them barely get to the shelter in time, surviving mostly unharmed... but unfortunately, the shelter was too close to the strike zone, and they begin experiencing the effects of acute radiation sickness soon after. Fortunately, it turns out this particular dimension is on a time loop and everyone's soon alive again; less fortunately, the apocalypse cannot be stopped, and the sprint for the shelter is essential unless you feel like burning alive this time around.

Comic Books

• What If?: In Vol.1 #70 "What If... The Silver Surfer Had Not Betrayed Galactus?", with the Silver Surfer unwilling to side with humanity against Galactus, the Fantastic Four are forced to retreat from the roof of the Baxter Building to a shelter deep beneath it — stopping only to rescue Alicia Masters. They just barely reach the shelter in time to get inside before the Devourer of Worlds begins consuming Earth. Sometime later, the Fantastic Four and Alicia reemerge in space suits to find that they're all that's left of humanity. Doctor Doom also arrives, offering them the chance to avenge Earth, since he himself was unable to get his people of Latveria to safety and barely able to save himself.
• When the Wind Blows: When Soviet Russia launches a nuclear attack on the United Kingdom and a four-minute warning is announced on the radio, Hilda fails to grasp the seriousness of the situation, decides to get the washing in, and dithers about the cake in the oven. Jim is reduced to shouting at her for the first time in the entire comic — to the point of calling her a "stupid bitch" in the animated adaptation — and physically dragging her into the Inner Core or Refuge just before the missile detonates.

Fan Works

• The Fallout fanfic Better to Reign in Heaven depicts the day the Great War broke out, as seen from the perspective of Tessa Dithers. At the time the sirens begin sounding, Tessa is hung-over and mistakes it for another evacuation drill until she notices the emergency broadcast on TV, sending her on a barefoot sprint through Washington D.C. to reach Vault 112. Tragically, many of the citizens she passes are also convinced that it's a drill and don't realize the danger until it's too late to do anything about it. Tessa arrives with just enough time to help the Neusbaums into the secret passage before Bill Foster closes it behind her, a nuclear ICBM detonating over Washington scant seconds later. Tessa and the other survivors are shaken but unharmed, and soon descend into the Vault itself, ready to begin their new lives in safety... right up until they take their places in their Tranquility Loungers and meet Dr. Stanislaus Braum.

Films — Animated

• Atlantis: The Lost Empire opens with Atlanteans trying to get to the central city before a shield seals off the city against a massive tidal wave that washes Atlantis into the sea. We see some Atlanteans futilely pounding on the shield as they're closed off and others embracing their loved ones before the wave arrives.
• The Iron Giant: Mansley tries to flee after impulsively ordering a nuclear missile strike on the Giant, who was standing right next to him — unwittingly bringing a localized apocalypse to the town. Fortunately, the Giant immediately stops him from escaping.

Films — Live-Action

• 10 Cloverfield Lane:
  • Emmett saw the lights of the imminent apocalypse while on his way home from work and ran for Howard's fallout shelter, which he helped to build, breaking his arm in the process of fighting to get inside.
  • Howard claims that this also happened to him and that he was speeding home to his shelter, hence why he crashed into Michelle and ended up taking her inside. The events of the movie, specifically Howard having had a previous victim before Michelle, more or less confirms it was a lie.
• Played for Laughs in Blast from the Past. Crazy-Prepared nerd Calvin Webber built a fully stocked family-size fallout shelter in his backyard in 1962. When news of the Cuban Missile Crisis hits, he and his pregnant wife, Helen, sprint for it... with Helen carrying a partially cooked pot roast in a Dutch oven. As luck would have it, a plane crashes into their house while they're underground. Thinking the Russians are attacking, Calvin activates a time-lock, trapping them for 35 years while they wait for the nuclear fallout to dissipate. They raise their son, Adam, underground before sending him out for supplies when the lock finally opens, allowing him to finally learn the truth.
• Less than a few hours after the Zombie Apocalypse begins in Dawn of the Dead (2004), Ana, Kenneth, and a few other survivors are left hurriedly searching for shelter after being caught out in the open. Fortunately, they happen upon a deserted shopping mall soon after, but they still have to get inside... and while they're getting a door open, prowling zombies happen to notice them, forcing the survivors to finish jimmying the door in record time before the worryingly swift zombies catch up with them.
• The Day After features huge swathes of the American population being caught off-guard by the nuclear attack warnings, leaving everyone hurrying for whatever cover they can find. The lucky ones are guided en mass into basements in panicked mobs, trampling at least one unlucky character in the process; everyone else is forced to take cover in whatever buildings were left open — or if they were caught on the highway when the EMP went off, their cars. The Dahlbergs are fortunate enough to have a shelter prepared in their basement, but it takes some effort to get everyone to it, with Eve having a breakdown and having to be carried down to the shelter, and Danny Dahlberg getting blinded by the flash from a detonation and having to be carried as well in the remaining seconds before the blast.
• In The Day After Tomorrow, the eye of the superstorm proves to be the most cataclysmic of all the apocalyptic weather phenomena witnessed in the film, capable of freezing just about anything in its path. Jack Hall is still on the way to the ruins of New York when he sees the eye overhead, forcing him to hastily dive into an abandoned kitchen and turn all the stoves on at once, barely managing to build up enough heat to survive the storm. Later, in New York itself, Sam and the others are looking for medical supplies on an abandoned Russian cargo ship when the superstorm appears overhead, forcing them to hurry back to their makeshift shelter in the library and frantically stoke the fireplace — seemingly pursued by the apocalyptic snap-freeze as they do so.
• When the apocalyptic nuclear war finally breaks out in Threads, the only group prepared for it are the Emergency Council, who have already taken up permanent residence in a shelter under Sheffield Town Hall. Everyone else is left struggling for cover: the Becketts are at home, but have to carry the grandmother of the family downstairs to the cellar before the blast wave hits; the Kemps are at home but haven't finished their shelter, and spend the last few minutes trying to assemble everything before it's too late but the house turns out to be right on the edge of a strike zone, so it's rendered worthless anyway; finally, Jimmy is caught out at the local joinery, and with his car rendered useless by the EMP, he's left frantically sprinting home. Given that he's never seen again, it can be presumed that he was killed in the blast.
• WarGames: After NORAD has declared Defcon One, meaning that nuclear war is imminent, David, Jennifer, and Dr. Falken try to get to NORAD before the base is sealed off. They barely make it inside because their jeep crashes and have to hurry in by foot.

Literature

• Children Of The Dust begins with Sarah discovering that nuclear war has just broken out, forcing her to run home from school. Fortunately, it's a good twenty minutes before anything in the UK is targeted, giving her time to get home, help her stepmother prepare a makeshift fallout shelter, and get inside before bombs start raining down on the country.
• The Compound: Eli recalls how his family had a doomsday plan that involved them all speeding into their massive, high-tech, luxury bunker. Unfortunately, because of the chaos, his grandmother and his twin brother Eddy both got left behind when they were rushing to escape the nuclear fallout. Once they were in the bunker, there was no way out, which meant that the family was separated, and Eddy and the grandmother had to be presumed dead. It's later revealed that there was no nuke drop, and that his father was simply unstable and very much aware of the fact that the outside world was completely safe; this was merely an experiment, and Eddy and the grandmother were the lucky ones for not getting to the bunker in time.
• Dungeon Crawler Carl: After every structure on Earth suddenly collapses into the ground without warning, a message from the interstellar Syndicate plays, informing the survivors (ie those who were outdoors) that the entrances to the World Dungeon will now be open for the next hour. Anyone who doesn't reach an entrance in time will be stuck; practically all of society's infrastructure has collapsed — every building, every enclosed vehicle — and the majority of its population is already dead.
  I didn't think about it. My head still swam with all the information that had been thrown at me. The pink Crocs barely fit on my feet. The distant fire was further away than I thought. I had seen firsthand what hypothermia did to people.
  So I turned toward the light, and I ran.
• In Red Dwarf: Last Human, it's eventually revealed that the current star system the Starbug crew have set up shop in is slowly being drawn into the Omni-Zone, with apocalyptic results for the local civilization. In the finale, Lister, Rimmer, Kryten, Kochanski, Cat, McGruder, and Reketrebn all end up on a habitable planet with deep caves where they can shelter long enough to survive the crossing into the Omni-Zone... but unfortunately, the godlike entity known as the Rage is blocking their path to the caves and they have no time to find another shelter. In the end, Rimmer infects himself with the Oblivion Virus and uses his light bee to spread it to the Rage, destroying it once and for all — leaving the path to the caves clear with just a few minutes to spare.
• The Rats:
  • The third book in the series, Domain, begins as World War III breaks out "in the not-too-distant future" and shows the citizens of London trying desperatly to survive a nuclear attack. A few prefer to Face Death with Dignity, but the majority are sent into a panicked frenzy for any shelter they can find, mostly basements and the subways. Unfortunately, while these shelters held up servicably, the survivors then had to scramble back outside, since above-ground buildings were so damaged by the blast that they were now collapsing on top of anyone hiding beneath them (which happens to the main character). And then they have to find ''new'' shelter because of the radioactive fallout coming down. There is one actual nuclear shelter featured; the Kings Way Telephone Exchange, meant for government officials, but the one character who knew about it couldn't reach it in time and was temporarily blinded by the nuclear flash.
  • The London Underground faired pretty well against the nuclear attack, but several people where trampled to death during the panic, and the survivors who went too far down ended up a free buffet for the titular rats. The characters have to make their way past the rats to reach the Kings Way shelter as well.

Live-Action TV

• Dark (2017):
  • Over the course of season 2, it becomes evident that on the 27th of June 2020, the apocalypse is going to happen. In the final episode of the season, most of the characters find refuge in the bunker or escape by travelling to another time.
  • However, episode 6 of season 3 reveals that Jonas, who was previously shown to be saved by Extradimensional Emergency Exit has been duplicated and another Jonas exists. This unfortunate character isn't saved by anyone else, so he has to find refuge anywhere he can, so he's forced to run for the basement of the house he is in.
• Fallout (2024): The very first scene of the series is a distant prologue happening during the time the nukes fell on California, with one family entering the fallout shelter of their home in the midst of the chaos. When another family tries to ask to be let in, the father of the home owners says that there is no more room and punches the father of the other family.
• In the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Silicon Avatar", a being called the Crystalline Entity shows up at a planet that the Federation is attempting to colonize. Typically it destroys all life on the planets it attacks; in this episode, however, Riker succeeds in evacuating all but two of the planet's population into a cave, saving them.
• The Twilight Zone (1985): In the episode "Shelter Skelter", Crazy Survivalist Harry Dobbs builds a state-of-the-art fallout shelter in his basement, believing it will allow him and his family to survive the inevitable nuclear war — though his obsession ends up driving his wife away. After seeing a news report suggesting that World War III might be imminent, Harry goes upstairs to call his wife, though she dismisses his call as him Crying Wolf... and in that moment, a nuclear detonation lights up the town. Harry immediately runs back downstairs, frantically counting down his remaining time aloud as furniture bursts into flames around him, and though the blast wave knocks him over, he's able to get himself and his friend Nick into the shelter without sustaining injury. Unfortunately for Harry, it wasn't nuclear war: it was just an accident at the local air force base that levelled the town and spread no further. Doubly unfortunately, the ruins are eventually encased in a concrete dome to prevent radiation from spreading, leaving Harry and Nick effectively buried alive.

Magazines

• In MAD's "Modern Chess" feature, which describes a Cold War-themed Setting Update of the ancient game involving nuclear weapons, when the Air Raid Siren piece sounds its alarm, all the Pawns try to jump into the nearest Fallout Shelter — only for most of them to be shot by the first Pawn to occupy it.

Tabletop Games

• The End of the World features numerous scenarios in which an ongoing apocalypse forces the player characters to seek shelter, often with the ongoing crisis hot on their heels:
  • "Under The Skin" can feature players being forced into the sewers to avoid the parasitic infestation bringing about the Zombie Apocalypse. One possible plot features them stumbling upon the door to a shelter hidden in the sewers; unfortunately, convincing the inhabitants to let you in is another matter, especially if you've gotten the attention of the zombie hordes... or worse still, the gigantic superorganisms the parasites combine into.
  • Once "Nanopocalypse" kicks off, everyone is rushing to find a shelter that's safe from the Grey Goo, but because the nanobots eat anything containing carbon — like concrete — the only viable shelter is another continent entirely. As such, airports are overrun with refugees, and because jet fuel also contains carbon, escaping player characters may find themselves boarding a plane with a huge wave of nanobots spilling onto the runway behind them. However, given that nanobots can travel on air currents, chances are you'll eventually be forced to flee again; the only viable long-term shelter for the players is an Eerie Arctic Research Station, as polar temperatures disable nanobots on contact... but by the time this is realized, getting there will require another frantic escape from the country you're sheltering in, followed by another potentially lethal flight through nanobot-polluted airspace.

Video Games

• 60 Seconds!:
  • At the beginning of a normal game, the air sirens for a nuke begin to sound once the timer (which is precisely 60 seconds long) begins, and the player has to fill the house's underground shelter with supplies, items and family members while assuring that the scavenging character is also able to enter it by the moment the timer ends.
  • The sequel 60 Parsecs! involves a similar things, with the crew captain having to bring crewmates and resources to a rocket in a space station when they receive the announcement that Earth is going to be destroyed.
• The Bunker:
  • The game kicks off with one of these already in progress, with various official personnel hurrying into the eponymous government fallout shelter well ahead of a nuclear attack on the United Kingdom. However, one of the medical staff is in labor and has to be wheeled straight from the entrance to the bunker's infirmary, where she gives birth to main character John Edmunds at almost the exact moment that the bombs detonate.
  • Thirty years later, John can find a report from the Prime Minister's Wiltshire bunker, stating that they experienced similar frantic rushes for the facility, with the PM arriving safely ahead of the blast, while most of the domestic staff were killed before they could reach the shelter. The same report also mentions that a group of fifty civilians fled for the bunker and tried to break in during the final minutes prior to the attack. They didn't succeed and the report indicates that the group was killed in the blast.
  • Inverted during the finale; after suffering a Fallout Shelter Fail due to years of strain on the bunker's internal systems, John has to escape from the bunker before he dies of radiation exposure.
• Dead Rising 2: Happens at the start of the game, when the zombies escape from the Terror Is Reality stadium. Chuck and his daughter manage to run to a designated emergency shelter as zombies swarm the city, getting inside along with a few other survivors.
• Dino Run: The player controls a dinosaur in the late Cretaceous period. The asteroid of doom has just hit the earth, and you have to run as fast as you can to avoid being caught by the pyroclastic wall of doom, and eventually reach a safe haven where you can live out the apocalypse. Or, if you win on the hardest difficulty, get rescued by an alien spaceship.
• In Exmortis 2, once it became clear that the war against the eponymous demons had turned apocalyptic, towns isolated enough to have avoided the Exmortis horde began building shelters in their basements, arranging for community-wide alarms via walkie-talkies and air horns in the event of an attack. Given the terrifying speed and power of the Exmortis, residents would usually have a minute to move from their homes to their shelters; the Apocalyptic Log at Lochear Fields Ranch mentions at least one unlucky household was caught off-guard and slaughtered before they could get anywhere near the shelter. Worse still, it turns out that the shelters only work against small bands of Exmortis; once the entire horde arrived, nothing could hide from them, hence why Mr Lochear opts to kill his family and himself rather than bother with the shelter once he hears air horns in the distance.
• Fallout 3: The Keller Family holotapes, which can be found scattered across the ruins of Washington D.C, documents a pre-War family doing this. Unable to get access to an official Vault, the Keller family instead seeks shelter in the National Guard Depot thanks to the oldest son who was a member of the Guard (he never made it to the shelter and is implied to have been arrested for treason after giving his family the access code). However, Ralph Keller, the youngest son, refused to hole himself up with his overbearing father, and chose to face certain death in the nuclear apocalypse instead. Considering that the final holotape in the Depot hints that the father kept letting in radiation whenever he went outside to scavenge, which mutated him into the Glowing One found inside, Ralph probably made the right choice.
• The opening to Fallout 4 takes place in the Player Character's pre-war hometown of Sanctuary Hills. After seeing a news report on TV about the bombs falling, you have to make a break for the local Vault with your spouse and infant son. Along the way, you pass by neighbors bogged down trying to bring belongings and armed guards at the gate turning away anyone who hasn't been registered as an official resident, including the very same Vault Tec rep who signed you up. You arrive just in time, with the bomb detonating over Boston just as you start to descend on the elevator platform into the Vault. Given that this is a Fallout game and the "Vaults were never meant to save anybody...", things quickly go From Bad to Worse, kicking off the plot of the game.
• Far Cry 5: The Resist ending has nuclear bombs go off just as Joseph Seed has been subdued, forcing the Junior Deputy and their fellow sheriffs to try fleeing to Dutch's bunker. The Deputy and Seed (handcuffed in the back) end up being the sole survivors after their police car crashes into a tree and kills everyone else inside, and the former ends up becoming the latter's prisoner after they murder Dutch inside the bunker while the Deputy is still unconscious.

Web Video

• I'm a Marvel... And I'm a DC: Late in After Hours, Lex Luthor's hideout is revealed to be a Pocket Dimension hidden outside space and time... which comes in handy during the events of Zero Hour: future Lex Luthor explains that the events that led to the Bad Future kicked off with a massive energy surge from Stan's Place; with barely enough time to react, he teleported himself into his pocket dimension, where he remained until the energy receded to safe levels. He emerged to find that Stan's Place was in ruins, the heroes and villains were all dead, reality had been wrecked, and Lex was the last surviving human in the universe. Turns out that it was due to Joker activating Luthor's Plan Q in the previous story arc, accidentally getting the attention of Darkseid and triggering an apocalyptic conflict.

Real Life

• According to the Protect And Survive pamphlet produced by the British Government between 1974 and 1980, an attack warning gives you about two minutes to make all the necessary preparations and get into the fallout shelter. If you happen to be caught outside when the warning is sounded, the pamphlet advises you to only attempt this trope only if you can get home in under two minutes; otherwise, you're told to take shelter in the nearest available building — or else just lie flat on the ground (preferably in a ditch).

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