Japanese rush to build nuclear bunkers, buy up air purifiers amid rising tensions with N.Korea

rt.com

Demand for nuclear bomb shelters and air purifiers has increased significantly among some Japanese against a backdrop of rising tensions with North Korea, which allegedly has the capability of hitting the country with missiles containing sarin.

Growing tensions in the East Asian region appears to have resulted in a boon for one particular sector of business in Japan; those providing people with nuclear bomb shelters and air purifiers...

The shelters have been ordered not only for private houses but for a number of companies as well, Oribe noted.

Oribe Seiki Seisakusho’s advertisement says their shelter is a hermetically sealed tunnel which comes with both radioactive and poisonous gas filters. The room could withstand the equivalent of the atomic bomb that was dropped by the US military in Hiroshima in 1945, should the bomb fall about 660 meters or more from the tunnel.

A similar company, Earth Shift, based in the Shizuoka Prefecture has also reported that it has received 10 times more requests for a shelter than ever before, according to Reuters.

The number of orders coming from customers from all over Japan has been steadily increasing since February, its sales manager Akira Shiga, said.

Japan’s concern over the possibility of nuclear and chemical attacks has been on the rise after Prime Minister Shinzo Abe addressed Congress in April, warning that North Korea is capable of launching missiles containing toxic substances.

Tokyo has also urged local government's to practice evacuation drills in case of a missile attack.