It was inevitable: The turmoil in the Middle East, coupled with the ongoing and increasing fears of terrorism, has led to a resurgence of interest in a concept that has been basically dormant in America since the early days of the Cold War: bomb shelters for the home.

The latest wrinkle is a do-it-yourself bomb shelter kit.

A nuclear engineer and designer of bomb shelters, Sharon Packer, can well attest to the swelling interest in home bomb shelters.”I’m getting calls all day long and into the night,” Ms. Packer says. “We haven’t had so much activity and gotten so many calls since right after 9/11,” she says.

Ms. Packer is a co-owner and vice president of Utah Shelter Systems, based in Heber, Utah, one of the country’s largest makers of steel bomb shelters and related equipment. She tells me public interest in home bomb shelters has risen dramatically following North Korea’s missile tests and the breakout of new hostilities in the Middle East.

“A lot of nervous people are calling me,” she says. “People seem concerned and very anxious to protect themselves and their families.”

Her company, which derives about half its business from the New York area, has been besieged by calls from around the country the past couple of weeks, including from Texas, Georgia, Florida, and Louisiana. Three of the calls were from Long Island. The chief interest, Ms. Packer says, centers on building new bomb shelters or retrofitting existing ones.

Bomb shelters, which vary in size, degree of protection, and cost, are by no means new in America. They date back to the early days of the Cold War, when thousands of Americans built them in their backyards and basements.The federal government even issued designs.

There are basically three kinds of shelters: steel, concrete, and fiberglass. Because of their greater durability and the high costs of materials, concrete shelters are much preferable and more expensive.

Ms. Packer estimates steel use in shelters will run about $90 a square foot, while concrete will go for about $350 a square foot. For an average 500-square-foot shelter that could fit, say, 25 people, a steel shelter would run about $45,000, Ms. Packer estimates. A slightly larger concrete shelter, 600 square feet, also geared for 25 people, would go for upward of $175,000.

Another player in bomb shelters is American Safe Home Inc. of Umpqua, Ore., which designs them and manufactures related equipment, such as air filtration systems — its hottest products — which offer protection against nuclear, biological, and chemical agents.

“We’re seeing much more interest because of what’s happening in the Middle East,” ASH’s secretary-treasurer, Brian Duvaul, tells me. “People are looking at the missiles raining down on Israel and worry it could happen here.” He also notes a decided spike in calls from dealers in the survival business,

Aside from its air filtration systems, which range in price from $1,900 to $2,300 and can also be installed in homes and apartments, the company makes a number of products for underground shelters, among them a blast-resistant steel door for $2,800 that can withstand a blast force of $7,200 pounds.

To capitalize on what the firm sees as a growing business, ASH in October will begin offering and promoting nationally a pre-fabricated do-it-yourself bomb shelter kit. It will contain a manual on how to build your own structured underground concrete shelter, steel forms, plywood to keep the beams in place, a blast-resistant steel door, and blast valves. The kit will run between $8,000 and $10,000.To do it right and not fudge, Mr. Duvaul figures construction of the shelter will cost between $15,000 and $25,000.

Because ASH is fattening both its customer base and network of dealers, Mr. Duvaul thinks it’s only a matter of time before the company’s annual sales, currently about $500,000, reach the $1 million mark.How soon? “It depends on the headlines,” he says. That being the case, he thinks a doubling of sales will come sooner rather than later.

If you wonder, as I do, how many bomb shelters there are in this country, the answer is that there are no accurate figures available. The reason, Mr. Duvaul explains, is that shelter owners keep such information very confidential; they want to ensure the safety of their own families and don’t want neighbors who lack such facilities to descend on their shelters in times of crises.

A spokeswoman at Toll Brothers, one of the nation’s largest builders of luxury homes, tells me there’s a lot more interest these days in bomb shelters and fallout shelters (which are usually located in the basement and are designed to protect the occupants from radiation emitted from nuclear fallout). Asked how common they were in new-home construction, he responded: “That’s not something we want to talk about.”

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