Nuclear bomb shelter put on sale

LONDON - A privately-owned bomb shelter in Britain capable of withstanding a blast 80 times that of the atomic bomb that devastated Hiroshima has been put on sale, a media report said Friday.

A man who feared a Cold War missile strike is selling his 350,000-pound house complete with a nuclear bunker, the Daily Telegraph reported.

Mike Thomas, 56, built the underground bomb shelter 20 feet below his kitchen in 1985 when tensions between Russia and the West were at their peak.

It is the strongest privately-owned bomb shelter in Britain and can withstand a one megaton nuclear blast, much bigger than the 0.012 megaton ‘Little Boy’ dropped on Hiroshima, Japan in 1945.

“I built the shelter because I was concerned about the threat of a nuclear attack,” Thomas said.

“The room is incredibly strong and has everything you need inside. If the worst did happened it is exactly where you would want to be.”

Thomas, an electrical engineer, became obsessed with the nuclear threat when he served as a member of the Royal Observer Corps and decided to build the fallout shelter to keep his family safe.

It took six months to complete the work at his home near Brixham town in Devon county, sothwest of England, the report said.

The bunker is also stocked with enough tinned and dried food to feed Thomas, his partner Mandy, 37, and son Daniel, 15, for a month.

Thomas decided to sell the home so he can downsize to a smaller property, and no longer believes a nuclear attack is imminent.

“I’m now not as fearful of a nuclear attack as I once was. I hope it can now offer another family the same peace of mind it has given us.”

However, Thomas says the bunker will offer the new owners protection against a solar flare disaster which is predicted for 2013 — a giant explosion of energy from the Sun which could cause global chaos.