Abstract: When high rise reinforced concrete shear wall structures are subjected to nuclear blast loading, the attached basement may be overturned. In this paper, the overturning mechanism was analyzed using the finite element program MSC.Marc, where subroutines for modified D-P soil model and fiber model of reinforced concrete components were incorporated. The numerical model was established considering the interactions between the super structure, the basement and the soil. A simplified analysis method is developed to calculate the soil pressure on the wall of air defense basement attached to high rise buildings under blast loading. In the method, winkkler model was adopted to simulate the ground’s behavior, and properties of springs were determined according to the ultimate rotation of the basement. The numerical results are in good agreement with those of finite element analysis.