Posted on 10/23/2015 6:49:35 AM PDT by NYer
FULL TITLE: SURVIVING A NUCLEAR ATTACK WITH SPAM, AND OTHER IMAGES FROM COLD WAR FALLOUT SHELTERS
A display of essential survival supplies for a well-stocked fallout shelter, c.1961. (Photo: NARA)
During the Cold War, as the arms race between Soviet Russia and the United States escalated, the perceived threat of nuclear attack became increasingly heightened. In response, the U.S. developed procedures to protect its citizens should the worst happen. In 1956, the National Emergency Alarm Repeater—NEAR—warning siren device was implemented to alert citizens to a nuclear attack. Students were drilled in "duck and cover" practices at schools. Books with titles such as Nuclear War Survival Skills were issued. And the only means of protection against radiation in the event of such a catastrophe was a fallout shelter.
Designs for fallout shelters appeared in pamphlets, subway advertisements and displays at civil defense fairs. President Kennedy even got involved. In September 1961, the same month that the Soviets resumed testing nuclear weapons, Life magazine published a letter from the President advocating the use of fallout shelters. Rather terrifyingly, it was printed over an image of a mushroom cloud.
But that was just one of the many interesting graphical representations of the threat of annihilation. Below, check out our collection of fallout shelter designs and photographs that show just how people in the 1950s and 1960s tried to prepare for the unthinkable.
A 1958 drawing of a family fallout shelter designed to accommodate four to six people. (Photo: NARA)
A Civil Defense bus/subway poster from 1959. (Photo: Public Domain/Courtesy Civil Defense Museum)
A fallout shelter in Michigan, c. 1960, for a family of four. It had a 10-inch reinforced concrete ceiling and concrete walls. (Photo: NARA)
"See the Family Fallout Shelter": the Office of Civil and Defense Mobilization exhibit at a local civil defense fair. ca. 1960. (Photo: NARA)
Directions to a fallout shelter at a high school in Boston, 1962. (Photo: NARA)
A display for different types of family shelters from the 1960s. (Photo: Public Domain/Courtesy Civil Defense Museum)
Fallout shelter supplies being distributed to nuns in Goffstown, New Hampshire, 1963. (Photo: NARA)
A woman takes an inventory of supplies for her household's fallout shelter, c. 1950s. A tub of potato chips sits under the table. (Photo: NARA)
An artist's rendition of a temporary basement fallout shelter, ca.1957. (Photo: NARA)
A basement family fallout shelter, including a 14-day non-perishable food supply, a battery-operated radio, auxiliary light sources, a two-week supply of water, and first aid, sanitary, and other miscellaneous supplies and equipment, ca.1957. (Photo: NARA)
I don’t remember if I ever saw that film in grade school. I heard about it on tv and saw the civil defense commercials. I grew up in a rural area, a hundred miles south of Chicago, which would have been a target. I think my mindset, as a child, was we were too far away from Chicago to be hurt by it being ‘nuked.’
Of course in my adult years being in the Army during the Cold War and living in Washington, DC, while assigned to the Pentagon. I took a more fatalistic attitude: I was literally at ‘ground zero’ being in the Pentagon. With the warning times for ICBMs there was no way for the city to be evacuated, thus I decided that my attitude would be ‘oh well, I’ll go so quick I’ll never know it.”
LMAO. Classic Twilight Zone.
What we discovered was that the Soviet Union’s nuclear capability was vastly overstated. It was dependent on rigorous discipline by their armed forces and that simply was never going to happen.
A basement was a perfectly acceptable shelter. Bomb shelters were usually built in areas where basements were not the norm....like where I grew up. Basement is from the Latin word “basemada” meaning “something that floods”. I knew 1 family with a shelter. The rest relied on their basement or a friends basement.
Spam, YUM! Made myself a fried Spam, scrambled egg and salsa burrito for breakfast yesterday.
Then you sure don’t want to see how sausage is made from pigs...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOs_a4iHQPY
MOST enjoyable ... shared and thanx !
When I served in the Navy over half-a-hundred years ago we were opening up a few inflatable lifecraft for inspection. They were provisioned with survival rations dated from during WWII. They were still edible. Not good, but hey, it’s just survival!
I got 4 Luckies in a little flip box, a couple of squares of TP and I think it was ham and eggs ... sort of
30 years later ... I didn't die and the cigarettes were still palatable
Boy, wouldn't THAT twist liberal panties into knots!
That looks like cat vomit.
It was all academic in my case as well since we lived in southeastern Virginia near Norfolk, Langley AFB, the Naval station, Newport News Shipbuilding & Drydock, etc. Probably first strike territory anyway.
When I was stationed at Beale AFB in the 80’s I was tasked as a Shelter Commander. During one of our inspections of the shelter and supplies we found cases and cases of C-Rations stocked — all dated 1942. I could never get anyone to take my bet and eat one. LOL
Hey, C-rats were great! Well, some of them. I suspect if the balloon ever had gone up we'd have found shelters full of starved victims sitting on unopened crates of ham and lima beans, though.
I was always the kid who asked teachers why we did certain things.
One day during a bomb drill I asked the teacher why we went down in the basement.
“It’s so the Russians can’t hurt us if they drop a bomb,” she said.
At the age of 7 or 8 the only Russians I knew anything about were named Boris and Natasha and the only bombs I knew of were the round black ones with fuses like you see in cartoons.
So I figured the basement of my elementary school would suffice to protect me from Boris and Natasha and their silly bombs.
Reminds me of where I worked for ten years, in Mountain View, CA. The building was built for Sylvania in 1958, just a mile from Moffett Field NAS, on the south SF bay. The basement wasn't a fallout shelter, but a bomb shelter.
The company was GTE by 1997, when they sold the campus to a housing developer. The builder was going to demolish all the old buildings for townhouses.
This buildings basement walls protruded about three feet above ground, so they needed to come down. However, the walls were so thick and strong that the demo contractor could not touch them without explosives.
Since this was in the middle of a residential area, with an elementary school across the street, blasting was not an option. They had to alter the plans to account for the old bomb shelter. Instead of housing, they put a small park inside the basement walls.
As far as I know, those old walls still shelter the park.
Yes - I clearly recall how we were instructed to hide from Soviet 57 megaton nuclear bombs by hiding under a $3.50 wooden desk.
Mmmmm... Bologna!
That doesn’t bother me so long as I only have to see the end product. And if you think about it, cows and pigs do indeed have eyes, lips, scrotums, udders, anuses (ani?) and other parts.
It’d be a shame to let all that just go to waste!
Boloney was recycling—if you will—long before it was popular.
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