Remember these? Perhaps you don't. If you're under 30, there's a good chance that you never even heard of them before. Fallout shelters. Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. Protection from the threat of total thermal nuclear annihilation. When I was a kid - back in the last century - we were worried about things like that. Heck, with literally thousands of nuclear warheads sitting on launchpads in the US and the USSR, it seemed like a pretty good thing to be worried about. You never knew when some damn fool might decide to push the button, when "balloon might go up" as they used to say. And so, with the threat of instant vaporization, incineration, shock waves that could turn you inside out and - not to be forgotten - lethal levels of radiation, the American public was sold on fallout shelters. Of course, if you were wealthy you could have a real nice fallout shelter buried in your yard or constructed in your basement. There were lots of plans available in
Popular Science,
Popular Mechanics,
Good Housekeeping. If you live in a house that was built in the fifties or sixties, you might possibly have one of those Cold War bunkers lurking beneath your lawn. Ya never know. If you weren't so wealthy - or if you were simply foolish enough to NOT prepare in advance to survive the end of the world as we know it - have no fear. The federal government published a handy little pamphlet on how to build a makeshift shelter out of just about anything. Build a cubicle with dressers full of clothing, lay a couple
of doors over the top of it and cover them with piles of books. Voila! You'll be safe from the deadly blast and fallout. Or go to your garage, pile a bunch of stuff on and around your work bench and crawl underneath. That'll keep you safe. My favorite one of all, however, involves digging a ditch next to your house, leaning some doors against the wall over the ditch, and covering the doors with as much dirt as they can bear. Climb under and you'll be snug as a bug in a rug. At least until it starts raining, that is. Then you'll be living in a fish pond. One of the things that amuses me the most about the idea of a fallout shelter is the idea that you could pack enough food and water into the very restricted space, along with all of your family members, to last you until the threat of radiation poisoning had gone away. I forget now, but I think the half-life of plutonium is something like 10,000 years. Your gonna need a lot of bottled water to get you through that one. Of course, a lot of this was a campaign by the government to keep the people pacified, to make them think they could actually survive an all-out nuclear confrontation. And maybe they could with the right amount of planning...and enough books and bottled water.
Remember these? Perhaps you don't. If you're under 30, there's a good chance that you never even heard of them before. Fallout shelters. Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. Protection from the threat of total thermal nuclear annihilation. When I was a kid - back in the last century - we were worried about things like that. Heck, with literally thousands of nuclear warheads sitting on launchpads in the US and the USSR, it seemed like a pretty good thing to be worried about. You never knew when some damn fool might decide to push the button, when "balloon might go up" as they used to say. And so, with the threat of instant vaporization, incineration, shock waves that could turn you inside out and - not to be forgotten - lethal levels of radiation, the American public was sold on fallout shelters. Of course, if you were wealthy you could have a real nice fallout shelter buried in your yard or constructed in your basement. There were lots of plans available in Popular Science, Popular Mechanics, Good Housekeeping. If you live in a house that was built in the fifties or sixties, you might possibly have one of those Cold War bunkers lurking beneath your lawn. Ya never know. If you weren't so wealthy - or if you were simply foolish enough to NOT prepare in advance to survive the end of the world as we know it - have no fear. The federal government published a handy little pamphlet on how to build a makeshift shelter out of just about anything. Build a cubicle with dressers full of clothing, lay a couple 
of doors over the top of it and cover them with piles of books. Voila! You'll be safe from the deadly blast and fallout. Or go to your garage, pile a bunch of stuff on and around your work bench and crawl underneath. That'll keep you safe. My favorite one of all, however, involves digging a ditch next to your house, leaning some doors against the wall over the ditch, and covering the doors with as much dirt as they can bear. Climb under and you'll be snug as a bug in a rug. At least until it starts raining, that is. Then you'll be living in a fish pond. One of the things that amuses me the most about the idea of a fallout shelter is the idea that you could pack enough food and water into the very restricted space, along with all of your family members, to last you until the threat of radiation poisoning had gone away. I forget now, but I think the half-life of plutonium is something like 10,000 years. Your gonna need a lot of bottled water to get you through that one. Of course, a lot of this was a campaign by the government to keep the people pacified, to make them think they could actually survive an all-out nuclear confrontation. And maybe they could with the right amount of planning...and enough books and bottled water.
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