Bunker Basket

Week twenty. The Education Funnel is on air. It has been on air since Monday. Two hundred and thirty-one children, every child in this facility, tuned in. The first lesson for the youngest cohort was about living things and how they grow. When the educator asked the children to describe something they had seen growing recently, one child said: Gerald. Also: the hen names have been announced - two thousand, three hundred and eighty-one submissions received. The name most frequently submitted was Brixton, chosen by forty-one residents. It went to the largest and most authoritative hen. And two residents...

Week nineteen. There was a wedding in the Central Atrium last Saturday. The music was true. The building became, briefly, a witness. Also this week: fifty new hens arrive on Level 4 and need names - one submission per resident to their CCR by Tuesday. And the Wellness Suite has expanded from five residents in care to fourteen. Nine additional intakes this week. Central Comfort reached toward people who had been managing alone past the point at which managing alone stops being possible. Tonight's Reflection delivers what was promised to the sixteen-year-old who has been listening for weeks: what it...

Week eighteen. Two residents are getting married. The ceremony will take place in the Central Atrium a week from this coming Saturday. Central Comfort is providing something from the kitchen. Daddy will not describe it in advance. Also: the Education Funnel launches in two weeks - on a Monday morning at nine on Funnel 2, the oldest promise in this broadcast delivered. A floor manager from Hawley-Edwards on Brixton High Street describes the last day the store would ever open. The security manager. Clifford. The lights going out section by section. And, separately: a piglet was born on Level 4.

Week seventeen. The day music became instrumental only - words carry private meanings the community cannot share equally, melody belongs to everyone. One submission returned with a warm note. Also: a specific Tuesday is described. The market in Brixton, open for an hour and a half after the image appeared on every phone. The music from the Record Shop stopping when someone locked the door. Brixton Road emptying in forty minutes. Calls that went through and calls that did not. And the farm team sends a note: the pigs are well, the hens are laying, Level 4 is warm. This...

Week sixteen. Four notices including one to the young people gathering in the lower service corridor near the Frere Road junction after nine o'clock. Daddy is not issuing a warning. He is being honest. Also: Priya, sixteen, writes to ask whether it is getting better outside. She cannot always stop thinking about it before sleep. Daddy cannot give the full answer tonight. Tonight's Reflection begins to: the broadcasts that stopped, the roads, the fires, the sky in the areas where it changed. The walls are standing between you and what he has just described. He needs you to know...

Week fifteen. Community Wellbeing Recognition Scheme: Central Comfort has been quietly recording contribution since the first week. The records now exist. They are being shared. Merits have been accumulating without anyone knowing. Some residents have considerably more than they expected. The Merit can be redeemed for small comforts. An egg costs five. Also: a guitarist went back on Thursday and played a long piece past its mistakes without stopping - possibly for the first time in years. And twenty-six residents attended What We Carried Down in the Theatre Cube. Daddy will not report what was said in the room.<...

The fourteenth week. A guitarist went to the Studio and held the guitar for ten minutes before playing. Then something settled. They played for an hour and are going back Thursday. A survivor is still here after a hard week, sitting in the Wellness Suite waiting area just to be near a room where people are being looked after. An Affirmation card sits on a windowsill next to a watch from before and a photograph brought down in a pocket. Also: a new section, Wisdom from Daddy - something small and practical each week. Tonight: appearing well in shared...

The thirteenth week. The Studio is open - lower western section, former storage, recording room and armchairs and instruments, a corridor window. The first person inside it spent forty minutes in the armchair with headphones on. The word they said when they left: Oh. Also: a survivor writes to tell Daddy that something happened in the preceding weeks that she will not detail tonight. She has been in the same place as the pact residents. She stayed. She is asking Daddy to ask her to write again next week. He does. The population of Bunker Basket South 5 is three...

WARNING: THIS EPISODE CONTAINS REFERENCES TO SUICIDE

Before this broadcast began, there was something in the week that needed its own section. Two residents were found in a lower western room. They had made a decision together. Daddy will not add clinical vocabulary to this. He will say only: he loved them. Also: a song called Still Here arrived Monday before Wednesday. One voice, no instrumentation, themes of exhausted gratitude and the fact of still being present. The timing is exact and cannot be undone. The population of Bunker Basket South 5 is three thousand and forty-three.

Eleven weeks. Residents have been writing about the hum. The low harmonic frequency produced by the Thermal Regulation and Air Circulation System. Technically possible to reduce. Central Comfort has decided not to. The food complaints have been passed to the Kitchen Operations Team. This week a song called The Sound of Air arrives - a resident who lay in the dark and really listened and wrote: "The hum is the sound of being kept alive. I'm grateful for the hum." Daddy says he needed that sentence this week especially. Cannot say more than that.

Bunker Basket is...

Ten weeks. A resident on Howard Road - third from the north end - put the kettle on. Someone knocked on Thursday. They talked for two hours about television and a dog she used to have. "I think I have made a friend. I'm not sure I deserve one, but there it is." Also: the cartography resident answered every question submitted via CCR. The nine-year-old's group is now three. A song arrives called The Second Cup - slow folk, a kettle kept warm, faith in the offer. It arrived Tuesday. The Howard Road letter arrived Friday. Neither sender knew...

Nine weeks. Before this broadcast begins, there are four things to say together. I am here. I am safe. I am held. I am known. Not a prayer. A statement of shared ground, four things true about every person in this building at the moment of saying them. Also this week: other places exist. Central Comfort is in contact with them. The condition of those places will not be disclosed tonight. The population of Bunker Basket South 5 is three thousand and forty-five.

Bunker Basket is a British post-nuclear sleep podcast. Immersive audio drama set underground after nuclear...

Something happened this week. At fourteen minutes past two on Tuesday morning, four residents attempted to reach blast door airlock five. Two were diverted. Two partially released the primary interior seal. The secondary seal held. The outer door was not breached. All four are now in the Wellness Suite - not because they want to be, but because they need to be. Also: the cartography session took place. One hundred and eighty-eight residents came. The session ran three hours and twenty minutes. Nobody left early. The cartography resident said they had been making a map of the building since...

The recording investigation has been resolved. Central Comfort knows who made it. A warm direct address was made on air. Also this week: the HP-X393-2 forms are raised for the final time - Daddy held the instruction for a moment before passing it on, the first admission of a personal reaction to a Central Comfort directive. The Education Funnel continues to require certainty before it can open. A song arrives called Every Meal Is Hot - Daddy finds it almost too much to hold. And the cartography session is one week away. Maps will be spread on a...

The Theatre Cube's first Psychiatric Carpenter wellbeing session drew four hundred and twelve residents. The first music submitted through proper channels arrives this week: Painted Shut, anonymous, Central Comfort holds the name. Daddy has been listening to it in his own time. Also: a resident has been making a map of this building since the third week and has agreed to present it. A resident describes the idea of the cartography session as producing a feeling they do not have a word for. Daddy provides one: orientation. And plant pots have been distributed to forty-two homesteads.

Bunker...

GGQ Chat went live on Thursday at noon. In the forty-eight hours since, this programme has received more letters than any previous week. The first Hey-There sent on this network was forty-two characters long and was about soup. Daddy has also found two more pieces from the Gathering recording - Heavy Led Door and Tin Cup Comfort - and is not sure whether the first title is a description or a declaration. Also: the Reading Room is open. Voluntary Farm Duty has its first intake of thirty-six. A nine-year-old has written to ask if there are other children.

Someone recorded the Community Gathering without permission. Central Comfort is making enquiries. In the meantime, the recording has been approved for broadcast. Two original compositions by resident musicians: Neon Sun Daddy and Paper Box. Daddy knows what Paper Box means to the person who wrote it and will not share it. Also this week: GGQ Chat launches Thursday - your screen name is your road and a number, eighty characters, all messages retained. The Reading Room opens Monday. The Theatre Cube opens Monday. Three thousand and forty-seven people in this building, and the first Hey-There has not yet been...

Someone made a recording at the Gathering. Also this week: the Memory Boxes. Daddy has been asked to clarify something. The Memory Boxes described last week - the physical objects, the photographs, the familiar smells assembled by the Thoughtful Retrieval Team - are not what he said they were. He is quite sure he never said that. What Memory Boxes actually are is something altogether different: sessions with Auxiliary Psychiatric Carpenters, using Recollective Practice. Also: the first Community Meditation, and three letters read from residents who are, slowly, beginning to find their feet.

Bunker Basket is a...

Week two. The Community Gathering took place on Sunday - two thousand, eight hundred and ninety-one residents across eight slots. The three musicians played in every one. This week: Community Notices arrive as a new standing section, a resident on Wilde Road has commenced an Adjustment Period, and Memory Boxes have been delivered to those affected by the Roundall installation delay. Each box was assembled individually. Each contains a photograph, a familiar smell, an object that would mean nothing to anyone else. Also: the Psychiatric Carpenter is introduced. First six appointments included. They will have some context already.

Bunker Basket is a British adults-only audio drama and sleep podcast set in a sealed underground fallout shelter after nuclear war. In this first episode, Daddy introduces himself - and Bunker Basket South 5 - to its three thousand and forty-seven new residents. There are Entertainment Roundalls to install, hydroponic farms to explain, and questions about the world outside that will not be answered tonight. The Surface Assessment Team is active. Information will be shared when it is both accurate and kind. For now: settle in. You are known here.

An immersive post-nuclear sleep drama set in post-apocalyptic...

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Bunker Basket is a British adults-only audio drama set in the aftermath of nuclear war. Post-nuclear Britain is barely survivable. The fallout shelter doors are closed. The surface world - London, the roads, the sky - is gone, or altered beyond recognition. What remains is this: a sealed underground community, several thousand residents, and a voice on the tannoy called Daddy.

Every week, Daddy broadcasts to the community. There are announcements, letters, stories, music, and meditations. Life in the bunker continues...