The History of Fallout Shelters In America

The constant disagreements between the United States of America and the Federation of Russia were so heated that the threat of nuclear war became a reality. To protect U.S. citizens from potential death, the Department of Defense devised the Fallout Shelter Program. These shelters were meant to house families and numerous people and keep them safe from the potential excess smoke and debris, aka, the "fallout". Keep reading to learn how it helped keep Americans together and the effect that it had on U.S. culture.

The Cold War was a period of pure tension between the Soviet Union (now Russia) and the United States. The eminent threat that Russian was going to bomb the United States with their nuclear missiles at some point during the war made the U.S. more prepared for what could come their way.

Before fallout shelters were made, there was NEAR, or the National Emergency Alarm Repeater program. This program was developed in 1956, and it was curated by the United States government as a warning sign of approaching danger including gas leaks, onset national attacks, and nuclear attacks, symbolized by their logo featured below.

After realizing that the sirens by themselves were not enough and that the shelters had more of a better success rate at protecting the citizens, the United States implemented the Community Fallout Shelter Program as a propaganda tactic to prepare families for nuclear war that could happen at any moment.

In 1964, President John F. Kennedy (left) wanted to show his commitment to a fallout shelter program and pledged to "let every citizen know what steps he can take without delay to protect his family in case of attack." Therefore, he called for the protection of fallout shelters and the immediate construction of them.

To enhance their ploy to persuade U.S. citizens that fallout shelters were the way to go, President John. F. Kennedy decided to interview on a more social level. Kennedy decided to write a letter to one of the most popular magazines of the 60s, Life Magazine, to advise the use of fallout shelters throughout the country.

To make the fallout shelter initiative a reality, wealthy men decided to help out with the plans to create a network of underground shelters. One of the first to want to help was Nelson Rockefeller, an American businessman, and politician who served as the 41st vice president from 1974-1977.

More than anyone, scientists were the most skeptical about the efficacy of fallout shelters as a strategic move for mass survival. Reasons for this reasonable doubt included that the limited urban attack scenarios were based on different variables like the weapons used and the height and location of the detonation.

Polling data focused on the private fallout shelters that were built following the pursuit of creating personal protection instead of community security. In March 1960, approximately 1,565 personal home shelters were built, and by June 1961, 60,000 had emerged, whether they were useful or ineffective.

Nelson Rockefeller (featured) was sold on the idea of creating only private family shelter programs and put major efforts to require them in every home, versus Kennedy's plan for community shelters. Yet, Rockefeller fell short and his feat was largely rejected by the public because it would require each family to fund their own shelter, which many of them could not afford.

Creating the community fallout shelters was the most imperative - and challenging - part of the shelter program due to the cost that it would take to create such a mass object. There was also the feat of building them strong enough to withstand the smog and smoke of any radiation that may occur.

In community shelters, the importance of the shelter's location was based on a 3-5 mile radius to ensure that civilians were far enough from where a potential bomb could land. Many of these shelters were created underground in the form of bunkers and tunnels about ten stories deep, which could hold tens of thousands of people.

You may think that most fallout shelters were underground but think again. It was just as easy to spot an above-ground shelter based on the location of what the shelter was connected to. Above-ground buildings already had concrete walls with steel frames, which made them a strategic place to house people. Some were even made of wood.

Can you imagine spending at least two weeks in a random underground bunker or tunnel with hundreds to thousands of other people? Well, the people of the 1960s did and they had certain precautions that they had to take to ensure their safety.

Due to the fallout shelters being mostly within concrete and metal infrastructure, climate control was a huge deal to ensure minimal health risks like bacteria development, dehydration, and human-to-human sicknesses like the flu or any other type of airborne illnesses.

A packed ventilation kit - or PVK - was a compact, portable ventilation device that could be electrically operated, or pedaled manually if the electricity was out or on low power. They were generally used below ground as an emergency to increase the habitability of any and all types of community shelters.

The shielding of the shelter was the most important part because its job was to protect the internal contents of the bunker from major radiation exposure. The required shielding was achieved with 10 times the thickness of any quality of material capable of cutting gamma-ray exposure in half. Then multiple thicknesses were applied, the shielding power multiplied.

Within these super shelters, certain items were standard to ensure the safety of the people that resided in there for days, to weeks, to even months. A battery-powered radio was one of them that helped to get reports of the pattern of the fallout and the clearance level of it.

A Geiger counter is an electronic instrument used for detaching the measuring radiation that could be spreading within the air. They were used to detect possible radiation, but they were very expensive to make and required frequent recalibration, which didn't help.

All of the precautions were used for one purpose: to keep them safe and alive from the few poisonous types of radiation that could end their life slowly and painfully. Different types of radiation emitted from the fallout included alpha radiation, beta radiation, and the third type (and most dangerous), gamma radiation.

From any atomic blast that you witness, you'll notice that alpha radiation is always the first detected. Thankfully, it is the best-case scenario compared to beta and gamma radiation. Alpha particles were researched and were found to have little penetration power through the human skin, or even a sheet of paper.

After alpha, comes beta radiation (middle), which is a bit stronger than alpha considering that it can pass through paper. However, after the wealthy partners and researchers conducted experiments, they concluded that beta radiation was not strong enough to pass through certain items like wood, aluminum foil, or human body tissue.

Beta burns were considered a small-scale effect compared to the largest effect of death, and were quite simple to cure if anyone obtained them. Medical personnel within the tunnels, as well as some citizens and parents, would teach the inhabitant how to get rid of the burns if they were experiencing irritated skin.

Gamma radiation (symbol featured) was the biggest threat to the people and the country because of its powerful and poisonous effects. Most fallout shelters were designed with lead to protect mostly from gamma radiation due to it being the only type of metal that can at least slow it down.

Certain measures created by the medical liaisons and the United States government were set in place to reduce the gamma radiation and the death toll it could cause. For instance, windows had to be bricked to make the cracks smaller, and gaps in the shielding had to be blocked using water containers.

As basic as a fallout shelter seems, they came in various shapes and sizes based on the location of the blast, and the underground blueprint from which the structure could be created. Different materials were used to create either pods, domes, tunnels, cylinders, or cubed-styled fallout shelters.

Pod fallout shelters were considered one of the smallest types and were mostly used for families or small groups under 10 people. They were primarily made with steel infrastructure and beams with concrete being used as the outer covering for protection against alpha and beta waves.

Dome-shaped structures were typically built above ground and led underground via a narrow staircase. It was built and commonly called "bomb shelters" because of the protection it provided, and the aesthetics, considering that it was in a round shape, like a bomb.

Cube shelters were usually built as an attachment to a building or house. Cube shelters, like domes, were generally built with concrete and used wooden beams on top and inside the structure to create balance from another blast that could occur. Some of these concrete blocks were also filled with sand to further reduce the amount of radiation that could come in.

Tunnel Shelters were the largest form of fallout shelter and could house thousands of citizens at once, although the shortcoming was the small amount of personal space that people had. The tunnels were created out of concrete on the outside and lead on the inside and deeper underground to prevent an excessive amount of radiation from entering.

While the average 1950s home was not the best place to create a shelter, many people decided to do so thanks to the Department of Defense's architectural plans of how to design one. Home shelters were thought to be a short degree of protection because they did not have the proper supplies to keep families safe while inside unless they gathered them themselves.

As you can imagine, it would be quite challenging staying in a cramped tunnel or small shelter without any food. Most of the food in the shelters was non-perishable which meant that the food could last a long time and nourish people quickly like crackers, biscuits, and even wafers. There were even carbohydrate supplements made in the form of hard candy.

The Red Cross was one of the major suppliers of food distribution during the prime of fallout shelter necessity. The Red Cross came out with a handbook titled Basic Course In Emergency Mass Feeding, and it describes how survival crackers and carbohydrate candy supplements could be kept in large tin containers to retain freshness, along with smaller, yet stacked boxes of Bulgar wafers.

Of the food that was given to the shelterees, the carbohydrate supplements were the most interesting. They were designed with poly-saturated carbs - including wheat and sugar - to help sustain hunger. They were about half an inch in length, in cube or oval form, and were about the size of a piece of bubble gum.

Cereal was another form of food that was given to individuals as a form of carbohydrates and sugars. The rations were approximately one handful four times per day. Cereal was a hot commodity because it would typically have more flavor than crackers or biscuits.

Survival crackers were the most abundant form of fallout shelter food because of the easiness of development and the sustenance that they provided each individual. They were made of Bulgar wheat and were dubbed the "All-Purpose Survival Cracker" because of the additional nutrients many shelters were thankful for.

The containers that housed the food were an imperative part of the fallout shelter survival program. They were made out of tin or aluminum material and could hold 20-80 pounds of food, either crackers, biscuits, or cereal. The food and containers were provided by the Office of Civil Defense, a sector of the U.S. Department of Defense.

The biscuits, crackers, and carbohydrate supplements were used to keep bodies fed and people satisfied, but it wasn't as horrid and dry as it sounds. Other foods were available towards the mid-1960s and people were extremely excited about the additional satisfying treats.

Water drums were one of the most important items in the fallout shelter when it came to body temperature control. Including the large fan used to keep the shelter's cool, the air would still be hot or, at times, the fan would break. The water was used to ensure no one passed out from a solvable issue like dehydration.

Each shelter, whether public or home, had to have a medical kit in case of radiation intake or onset injury that could occur. For starters, the kits contained items for recoveries like gauze, sponges, bandages, operational scissors, needles, and wire for potential stitching.

Community fallout shelters used medical kit A for groups of 50-65 persons and were meant more for everyday cuts, bruises, and medical checkups than serious injury or illness. Kit A contained purified cotton balls to clean away possible infections, and also housed the gauze pads that were mentioned earlier. Vaseline was also part of the medical deal. 

Medical kit C was essentially a bigger - and more qualitative - version of medical kit A. It could provide medical services for a group of 300-325 people and was also provided by the Office of Civil Defense. Here, you could find items like Aspirin tablets, eye & nose drops, Isopropyl alcohol, and even penicillin.

In each fallout shelter, the U.S. Department of Defense did its best to supply radiation instruments so that the foremen of each location can monitor the amount of radiation both inside and outside of the shelter. Detection devices like the CD V-700 and the CD V-72 were able to obtain samples of the radiation and determine its poison level.

Can you guess who supplied the radiation detection devices? That's right, it was the United States Atomic Energy Commission (AEC). The organization was formed in 1946 by the U.S. Congress to foster and control the peacetime development of atomic science and technology following the devastation of World War II.

On the inside, it was easy to determine if you were in a fallout shelter due to all the material being obvious, but how do you think people found the shelter itself? Simple, they put up a sign. Each community fallout shelter had a yellow and black sign designed with a black circle and three triangles in them with the literal words "fallout shelter" plastered on it.

The public was aware of fallout shelters and why they were being discussed, but Kennedy thought that it was best that the citizens have access to the details of what to possibly expect. Therefore, in 1962, the Department of Defense - Office of Civil Defense created the publication Fallout Protection: What to Know and Do About Nuclear Attack.

Even when fallout shelters were being discussed in the early 1960s, artists, writers, and even public figures were using the national crisis as a trampoline to launch their own creative platforms. For example, authors Robert A. Heinlein, Dean Ing, and Walter M. Miller wrote novels that featured the fallout shelters.

Remember the film Blast from the Past? It was released in 1999 and was featured as a romantic comedy. It told the story of a nuclear physicist and his family moving into a well-equipped fallout shelter in 1962, and not emerging until 1997! The film showcased their reaction to the modern-day society they now lived in.

Malcolm in the Middle is a hilarious T.V. show that features a family and their somewhat hectic lifestyle. In one episode, it revealed the subplot based on characters Reese and Dewey discovering an unknown bomb shelter in their backyard and trapping their father in it, who becomes in love with the 1960s decor.

To commemorate the short existence of the famous shelters, Russian author Dmitry Glukhovsky created the Metro 2033 book series. It features the life of survivors in the subway system below Moscow and Saint-Petersburg following a nuclear exchange with the United States of America. It has also been turned into a video game, featured here.

Although the community fallout shelter was disbanded in 1975 due to significantly reduced worry from citizens and the government, they are still in existence, but simply not in use. Each year, people stumble upon a half-stocked, decrypted, underground room that feels more like being in a time capsule. Today, there are modern fallout shelters that are more lavish and spacious than in the '60s.