Bomb Shelters

Bomb Shelters

During the late 1950s, as Cold War fears became part of everyday life, one survey showed that 40 percent of American families were considering building a shelter in which to wait out the effects of a nuclear attack. With bomb shelters selling from $100 for the basics to as much as $5,000 for a deluxe model, Wall Street analysts predicted that the shelter industry could become a $20 billion business.

The magazine Popular Mechanics published a blueprint for those who preferred to build their own, and civil defense films provided instructions for those who intended to seek protection in their basements. Shelters were stocked with survival kits that included fallout protection suits, first-aid supplies, canned goods, flash lights, and water. Nuclear war was a recurring theme in movies and on tele vision, and air-raid drills in elementary schools taught "duck-and-cover" techniques.

Fears peaked in 1962 with the Cuban missile crisis; afterward, as the imminence of the nuclear threat began to fade, and there was some realization that backyard fallout shelters would provide little protection anyway, most people abandoned their shelters. An enlightened few converted them to wine cellars.