Fallout Shelters

As the 1960s dawned there were dark, mushroom-shaped clouds on the horizon. As relations between the US, Cuba and the Soviet Union deteriorated (in the wake of the ill-conceived Bay of Pigs invasion and the near-miss of the Cuban Missile Crisis) and the Cold War became a reality, John F Kennedy urged Americans to build their own fallout shelters.

As a result, the fallout shelter industry experienced an unprecedented boom. In back yards across the US, Americans stocked their shelters with all the canned goods, eating utensils, sanitation supplies, first-aid kits, reading material and drinking water needed to wait out the necessary two weeks of fallout from a nuclear explosion.

At the same time, most governments carried out civil defense nuclear war programs. American school children were taught to duck under their desks at school in the event of a nuclear strike (which may guard against a firework, but certainly not an atomic bomb!).

Until such time as the bombs actually started dropping, most families used their new shelters as family recreation rooms, or as cubby houses for the kids.