The Brief, Terrifying Time Americans Went All In on Fallout Shelters

Faced with the looming possibility of nuclear war, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist William Libby had a plan: He would climb into his underground bunker, take a bunch of oral sedatives, and try to sleep through the apocalypse.

Libby wasn’t alone in plotting a personalized doomsday scenario. For a brief but tumultuous time in 1961 and 1962, Americans were consumed by the potential for a thermonuclear interruption of life as they knew it. While that decision was out of their control, there seemed to exist the possibility they could take shelter and wait for the radioactive dust to settle. That meant buying, leasing, or building a fallout shelter, a family-sized escape room where one could—hopefully—avoid a grim death.

Government booklets, federal officials, and magazine advertisements made it seem simple. But the reality of burrowing underground with pills, a pail, and canned vegetables while surrounded by in-laws was, for some, more frightening and untenable than nuclear destruction. The more one learned about the shelters, the more Libby’s idea to remain unconscious made sense.

1. The Blast Area
2. Gimme Shelter
3. Loathe Thy Neighbor
4. A Sheltered Life

The Blast Area

For a few fleeting years following the end of World War II, the United States enjoyed some relative peace as the world’s only nuclear superpower. But 1949 brought news the Soviet Union was now similarly armed; escalating tensions throughout the 1950s gave both countries and their respective citizens a case of Cold War anxiety. Officials and civilians alike were forced to imagine the unimaginable: what to do in the event cities were leveled by nuclear attack.

Presidents Truman and Eisenhower backed the Federal Civil Defense Administration, or FCDA, which gave local governments funds and resources to endorse privatized programs. That led to duck and cover, the morbid grade school practice that had students diving under their desks to try and avoid being gored by shrapnel near a blast. It also led to some fortified public spaces being converted to bomb shelters, inspected and marked with the now-iconic fallout shelter sign.

But actually building public shelters had two major drawbacks. For one, the government was unwilling to pay for them. For another, it was virtually impossible to know where a nuclear attack might land, making the location of such shelters something of a guessing game. Worse, those trying to flee toward a public space might wind up succumbing to either the immediate physical effects or the radioactive fallout.

As a result, private shelters became part of the Cold War conversation—just not a serious part. The idea of going through the expense and trouble of creating a shelter seemed disproportionate to the actual probability of a nuclear strike. According to The Courier-Journal, shelter advocates were initially thought of as “cranks” or even regarded as un-American or cowardly for planning on going into hiding.

“They would convert our people into a horde of rabbits, scurrying for warrens, where they would cower helplessly while waiting the coming of a conqueror,” Major General John B. Medaris, former chief of the Army Ballistic Missile Agency, told TIME.

That line of thinking seemed to hold until the summer of 1961, when a highly-regarded public figure began to implore American families to pursue fallout shelters. The advocacy didn’t come from any crank: It came from President John F. Kennedy.

In speeches and even in an editorial in Life magazine, Kennedy recommended American households take whatever steps were needed to outfit their property with a fallout shelter. It was, he said, a husband and father’s “duty” to his family. Such steps were to be taken “as rapidly as possible.” This was in large part a reaction to escalating conflict between East and West Berlin, which further demonstrated the potential for all-out war. (Kennedy himself had two bunkers, one on Nantucket near a vacation home in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, and another near Palm Beach, Florida.)

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There were the requisite statistics to back Kennedy’s plea: The widespread adoption of shelters might cut theoretical American casualties from 165 million to 85 million. In Life, Kennedy asserted public and private shelters together could preserve 97 percent of the population. It was even floated that Soviets might decline to initiate mutually assured destruction if they believed a large number of Americans could endure the worst of it.

“Civil defense must be part of the normal way of life,” said Office of Civil Defense employee Virgil Couch. “Like smallpox vaccination, we’ve got to get used to it and build it into the normal fabric of our lives. In the old days, for instance, outhouses sat in the backyard; now the bathroom has moved inside. Garages used to sit on the edge of the lot; now many garages have been built into the home. The next room to follow this pattern is the family fallout shelter.”

Virtually overnight, Kennedy’s position led to a new American craze: the race to install a backyard bunker.

Gimme Shelter

There was an important distinction between a fallout shelter and a bomb shelter. The latter was generally defined as a place that could potentially withstand the violent blast of a nuclear attack, presuming it was far enough away from ground zero. A fallout shelter was not intended to endure any kind of violent environmental assault; it was meant to be a place to idle while the radiation fallout dissipated, which some theorized might take weeks. (This was far too optimistic an estimate, but more on that later.)

Because fallout shelters didn’t need to withstand concussive force, a cottage industry of ready-to-assemble shelters began to spring up. One company in Philadelphia offered a shelter made of polyethylene for $2800. One outfit in San Francisco had a kit that could be shipped and then assembled as a kind of IKEA nuclear solution.

Most were expected to be placed either in a basement or underground, the latter of which necessitated excavation deep enough to have 3 feet of soil overhead or 2 feet of poured concrete, with waterproofing and air circulation measures, along with periscopes to assess the conditions above ground. (Those who had in-ground pools were relatively lucky, as they didn’t have to dig so much as place the shelter in an emptied pool and then fill it in with dirt.) While digging was possible, anyone opting for an underground shelter was better off hiring contractors. That process could take three weeks, though some, like San Diego’s Chris Arp Construction Company, advertised a full shelter ($1995) that could be erected in just one day.

Basements themselves were not thought to be suitable for shelter without reinforcement. A wooden ceiling, for example, would need to be covered by a concrete layer; the entry would need to be at right angles to make any wind-carried radioactive dust inadmissible. And while it was possible to build a shelter above ground, it typically needed to be double-walled, with soil in between layers as well as on the roof.

Some shelters recognized the need for creature comforts. One offered by the Lone Star Steel Company came complete with a painted window on one wall, the better to imagine one was in a regular living room and not idling in what amounted to a coffin underground.

The interior design of a shelter was also discussed. A color consultant named Faber Birren, who reportedly advised on color schemes for naval ships, suggested brightening one’s drab surroundings. “All human beings are responsive to their environment,” he said. “In fallout shelters there will be psychic factors to attend to, tension and prolonged confinement, all of which offer a chance to put color to practical use.” Variety, he added, was “essential … it will relieve monotony and constantly revitalize human spirits.” Birren recommended woodgrain, yellow, beige, and pink. White paint would appear too harsh under artificial light.

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Advice was also doled out for how such bunkers could double as gathering areas until nuclear destruction commenced. A family could use it as a projector room for movies, as a gathering place for Boy Scouts, a sewing room, or child’s study area.

Because ready-made shelters were expensive, the federal government permitted FHA loans for them. They also distributed plans for a do-it-yourself shelter. With roughly $150 in materials, including concrete blocks, mortar, nails, and sheathing, a family could obtain some rudimentary protection. The booklet outlining the blueprint endorsed it as a worthwhile father-son activity.

Once a shelter was in place, there was a matter of stocking it. Canned goods were a given, but the government also recommended a battery-powered radio and first aid kits. Stores set up displays of different pantry-type foods under the umbrella “Grandma’s Pantry” as a kind of checklist for what to buy. General Mills introduced Multi-Purpose Food, a “synthetic protein” nutritional mix that was shelf-stable. A number of companies, including Keebler, produced a “survival cracker” made out of bulgur wheat. Some advised the planting of hardy vegetables like rutabagas.

Thought was also given to the possibility a family member might expire while sheltering. For this, one company offered a “burial suit,” a plastic body bag intended to seal in odors. Those still breathing could use it as a sleeping bag.

The government’s advice was sweeping in nature but not necessarily practical. Speaking with The Morning Call of Allentown, Pennsylvania, in 1961, architect John Pidcock pointed out that authorities often missed a lot of nuance. There was, he said, no suggestions on where to get a hand-cranked air blower, a necessity to take in air when the power is out. Nor was the government’s recommendation for first aid supplies all that comprehensive.

“In a little place like this with three kids after a week I should think we’d need a bucket of tranquilizer,” Pidcock said.

Loathe Thy Neighbor

The construction and installation of these shelters also introduced an uncomfortable moral dilemma, one that went beyond the ethical implications of nuclear warfare. If one had a shelter and one’s neighbor did not, was it your moral obligation to permit them to join, or was it your duty to fend them off?

Some tried to avoid the matter altogether by keeping their shelter a secret. In Chicago, shelter salesmen visited prospective customers at home by pulling up in beer delivery trucks—the better to convince others on the block you were simply planning a party rather than for nuclear winter. But for others, stocking up didn’t mean canned goods. It meant buying lots of ammunition.

Shelter owners debated the merits of defending their shelters from invaders through use of weapons. “When I get my shelter finished, I’m going to mount a machine gun at the hatch to keep the neighbors out if the bomb falls,” one Chicago shelter owner told TIME. “I’m deadly serious about this. If the stupid American public will not do what they have to [in order] to save themselves, I’m not going to run the risk of not being able to use the shelter I’ve taken the trouble to provide to save my own family.”

In Austin, a hardware store owner echoed the sentiment. Addressing his small arsenal, including a .357 magnum of the type eventually made popular by Dirty Harry, he said, “This isn’t to keep radiation out, it’s to keep people out … I’ve got a .38 tear-gas gun, and if I fire six or seven tear-gas bullets into the shelter, they’ll either come out or the gas will get them.”

For some, publicizing their shelter didn’t seem to be much of an issue. Since such shelters often required building permits—a matter of public record—the names and addresses of owners wound up being published in area newspapers.

Ultimately, the biggest danger to the shelters wasn’t likely to be desperate neighbors but the do-it-yourselfer: a lack of proper reinforcement, building inspectors said, could result not in societal collapse but structural collapse, trapping or killing occupants inside. Under the headline “Warning: Your Fallout Shelter Could Kill You,” The Tallahassee Democrat cautioned that the government’s building plans included supporting concrete blocks on 2x6 wood for the roof, a construction concern that caused some cities to reject applications for permits.

A Sheltered Life

For all of the publicity and debate over fallout shelters, the reality was that not many Americans felt they were an absolute necessity. A 1961 Gallup poll indicated that 93 percent of respondents had no plans to build or buy a shelter. In Atlanta, Georgia, the total number of shelters could accommodate just 500 people out of a population of 1 million. Ultimately, as few as 200,000 homes might have adopted a shelter in the 1960s, which was roughly 0.4 percent of homes. (Far more, as many as 9 million, did opt to stock up on food and other supplies.)

Cost was certainly a factor. So was practicality. While magazine articles and models posing in sterile shelters for photographs told one story, the reality was another. Few shelters made provisions for plumbing, meaning that occupants would have to defecate or urinate in a bucket. (The government’s helpful suggestion: Take a chair and cut a hole in the seat for a toilet.) Waterproofing could fail, leading to flooding. (One underground shelter in Fort Wayne, Indiana, that was poorly protected against the area’s high water table actually rose to the surface just as the Cuban Missile Crisis was brewing in 1961.) With some cheaper options, including the DIY plans, the shelters themselves were not luxurious: some had a floor-to-ceiling height of just 4 feet, meaning adult occupants wouldn’t be able to stand upright.

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In the event a nuclear attack led to fire, occupants might effectively be entombed. Worst of all, estimates that sheltering might need to last just weeks soon gave way to more realistic reports. If one could “wait out” a nuclear fallout, they’d likely have to be in there for months. And for those dwelling in apartments or without property to spare, shelters were off the table entirely.

There was also a logical counter to shelters. If the Soviet Union was brash enough to launch an attack, what would stop them from launching another just as survivors emerge bleary-eyed from their subterranean hovel?

Even Kennedy was cooling on the idea, sensing that shelters, which by their nature were associated with property ownership, might divide the country into a class war before a nuclear war struck. Public sentiment turned fairly quickly from preparation to resignation. If a nuclear attack was on the table, there wasn’t much one could do.

“I really think that fallout shelters are very unnecessary,” Staff Sergeant Allan Childers told a reporter. “When you get bombed and survive it, what are you going to do when you come out? With all the radiation that will be around, you’ll probably die anyway. But, I don’t feel that there will be a war so I don’t feel that shelters will be needed.”

By 1964, fallout shelters had gone the way of the Hula Hoop—a fleeting fad no longer at the top of mind. By the 1970s, talk of private fallout shelters had all but disappeared. Instead of nuclear attack, public attention was turned toward political controversies like Watergate and the Vietnam War. The kind of survivalist mentality that drove the shelter craze was later adopted by so-called doomsday preppers, who horde supplies and secure remote areas in the event of societal collapse. Their forbears were the families who heeded Kennedy’s well-intentioned advice and who shared the sentiment that was best expressed by one owner who took the decorating tips to heart. Outside his bunker was a welcome sign that read: “He who lasts, laughs.”

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