Rose, author of the book One Nation Underground, defense officials placed their faith in the counterforce doctrine, a game theory that held that atomic war would be waged with only military installations as targets. What were the feds thinking? According to Kenneth D. Even out there, Life magazine said, occupants of a fallout shelter “might be barbequed.” In New York, for example, most of the government shelters could be found in Manhattan and Brooklyn-despite the fact that a 20-megaton hydrogen bomb detonated over Midtown would leave a crater 20 stories deep and drive a firestorm all the way to the center of Long Island. were in “risk areas”-neighborhoods so close to strike targets that they’d likely never survive an attack in the first place. Two-thirds of the fallout shelters in the U.S. Occupants of Shelters Near Strike Targets 'Might Be Barbequed'Ĭonditions were a serious problem, but location was a bigger one. A handy tip from a government booklet advised: “Make a commode by cutting the seat out of a chair and placing the pail under it.” It’s little wonder that the medical kits also included phenobarbital to chill everybody out.Ī Long Island family sits in a ‘Kidde Kokoon,’ an underground bomb shelter manufactured by Walter Kidde Nuclear Laboratories, in Garden City, New York, c. But most citizens would find only dank, low-ceilinged basements equipped with the barest necessities: bedding, drums of potable water, medical kits and government-issue wheat crackers.Īnd while Uncle Sam thoughtfully provided toilet paper, the toilets themselves were harder to come by. Fallout Shelters Offered Crude Accommodations, At BestĪnd what sorts of quarters awaited those who staggered down the stairs? Only a handful were relatively posh Chase Manhattan Bank, for one, dropped $49,000 on “compressed” wheat biscuits in banana and chocolate flavors to stock its five-story shelter. Eventually, some 19,000 of them would become shelters. In New York alone, the Army Corps of Engineers contracted with 38 architectural firms to inspect 105,244 large buildings. The 3M corporation (best known today as the maker of Scotch tape and Post-It notes) manufactured 400,000 shelter signs, for which Uncle Sam paid less than a penny apiece. Blakeley of the Army Corp of Engineers, the signs featured three yellow triangles inscribed in a black circle-an arresting image approved by government psychologists.Īs a test, Blakely had envisioned the signs put up in downtown Manhattan “when all the lights are out and people are on the street and don’t know where to go.” And since half of Americans at the time were smokers, Blakeley specified the use of yellow reflective paint to make the signs visible in the glow of a cigarette lighter. Pittman, give “our presently unprotected population some form of protection.”Īmericans got their first look at that protection in January of 1962, when fallout-shelter signs began appearing in 14 cities across the country. While fallout shelters would do nothing to safeguard people from an actual bomb, they would, in the words of JFK’s civil-defense chief Steuart L. But the price tag for those was prohibitive ($200 billion by one estimate), so the feds opted for the next-best thing: shelters that would shield citizens from the radioactive particulates likely to be blowing around in the weeks after an attack. ![]() A surer way to protect Americans from a nuclear attack-which, with the Berlin crisis of 1961, looked increasingly possible-was to build reinforced-concrete blast shelters around the nation that could actually withstand an explosion. Kennedy was privately skeptical about the value of a public shelter program. They are the products of an ill-conceived program, designed to appease a population with little faith in that program even working. They’re tangible artifacts of that era.”Īnd though their original purpose has vanished, the signs still have much to say. “They outlasted everything, including the Berlin Wall. “They’re an enduring symbol of the Cold War,” says popular-culture historian Bill Geerhart, who since 1999 has maintained, a meticulous chronicling of the duck-and-cover era. ![]() The Fallout Shelter Sign Design Was Approved by Government Psychologistsĭented and faded now, the Kennedy-era fallout shelter signs still cling to the sides of buildings across the country. ![]() Men install fallout shelter sign in Chicago.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |