adorable children’s bomb shelters should not be a thing

Feb 12

January 13, 2024

The year 2024 delivers humanity a new take on bomb shelter chic: children’s bomb shelters, popping up all over Ukraine, as civilians try to protect their children from the russian roulette of daily missiles and drone strikes in every city across the country. Style and comfort depends entirely on funding. Some shelters are bare, subterranean bunkers with concrete floors, cement walls, sparely lit, heated only while in use. Some boast proper drywalls, coved ceilings and doorframes, warm lighting, reliable heat, ample electrical outlets and spare generators, courtesy of foreign funding (also delivered in the procedural style of russian roulette). The common thread among these shelters is a Hobbit-like coziness and an effort to make children feel safe, warm and comfortable: familiar toys, beanbags, throw rugs, warm blankets, mini-libraries, little desks, small chairs, classroom and art supplies and displays of children’s artwork abound. Some even have ample outlets to keep phone addicted tweens occupied. What a shelter may lack in resources, it makes up with hand-painted wall art. Teachers come, curriculum is taught, stories are read, hugs and snacks are always available. If you must hide your children underground, make it an Alice in Wonderland illusion of safety. Remind them of the brave fierceness of Elsa and the optimism of Anna from Frozen. Backlight faux windows to make it feel like sunlight is streaming in. Play, sing, paint, dance, nap underground.

In this post modern apocalypse of today’s Ukraine, a dark cynic could host a reality TV show contest for the “best of” in categories like “bomb shelter with the coziest tiny beds,” or “bomb shelter with the best children’s artwork,” or “bomb shelter best themed after a Disney movie.”

Bomb shelters and “points of invincibility” are a common site across Ukraine. Walk along any street block in any city, town or village and you’ll see signage pointing you to a subterranean hide out. Drive along the highway and you will see billboards advertising custom bomb shelter building services. The fact that so many of these bunkers now have little beds, toys and tiny desks to accommodate its youngest citizens is something that has become commonplace.

There is one outlier to this phenomenon: Kharkiv. As a front-line city, Kharkiv receives a daily barrage of missiles, drone attacks and artillery. The aerial raid alarm blares every few hours, night and day. It has become the background noise, like traffic and generally ignored as heeding its warning obviates the point of living above ground. I asked several people in Kharkiv whether their shelters had special accommodations for children. The common response to this question was a bemused head shake, followed by “What’s the point? Our kids don’t go to bomb shelters here; they’d have to live there permanently. This is Kharkiv.”

I did manage to track down one shelter in a Kharkiv suburb, located beneath a school and outfitted with desks, school supplies, a wood-burning stove and a few child friendly items. Created during the first few weeks of the full scale invasion, this shelter was one of the few ways to survive the russians tanks rolling through the streets. Now it is hardly used but restocked and prepared for the future, should the need arise.

The Ukrainians hope and plan to win the war. But it will take them a long time before they feel like their children are safe. So they build cute, cozy bomb shelters so their children don’t have to huddle in dark potato cellars with no electricity, water or heat as they did in the first months of the full scale invasion in 2022.

This is Ukraine’s macabre reality now. The rest of the world should not accept this as the new normal.