Abstract
Within apocalyptic contexts, bunkers can be used as indexical signs to analyze a variety of conditions of apocalypse. Characteristics such as material construction, placement in the landscape, occupancy, and intended or actual ruination provide the basis of a narrative of intended survival. Utilizing Paul Virillio’s concepts of total war and liquid fear, the actual and imagined bunkers of the Atlantic Wall, American prepperism, and Hideo Kojima’s Death Stranding (2019) can be linked, creating a chain, much like the Atlantic Wall itself, which connects the routine apocalypses of World War II and the COVID-19 pandemic to the imagined apocalypse of the Stranding. The use of bunkers in these contexts ties each subject into a continuity of death, survivance, and haunting which exist within and without these concrete fortresses. While it must be acknowledged that there can be no singular definition of apocalypse which encompasses these scenarios, three characteristics appear to be shared across these varied environments: apocalypse must imperil the lives of a significant portion of the population, create conditions where fortified interiors are considered safer than un-fortified interiors or apocalyptic exteriors, and must reshape life for its (potential) survivors and their descendants. As the conditions of apocalypse become more common in our day to day lives—whether in dystopian fiction, the news we consume, or our lived realities—it becomes increasingly vital to understand what it takes to survive, how bunkers become landmarks of that survival (or failure to survive successfully), and whether survival will ever conclude in the end of apocalypse.
Presenters
Ellis Mc DanielStudent, PhD, The State University of New York at Buffalo, New York, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
2026 Special Focus—Design Across Time
KEYWORDS
Apocalypse, Bunker, Shelter, Prepper, Atlantic Wall, Virtual Space
