Are (or were) TV and radio stations required to have a doomsday shelter/ control room stocked with food and firearms to support at least one person to keep the station running?
I’ve never heard of such a thing. Early in the Cold War, they were required to participate in CONELRAD (control of electromagnetic radiation), a program designed to make it difficult for Soviet bombers to use US radio stations as navigation beacons. In the event of an attack, most radio stations would go off the air.
I don’t know of any specific requirements for a bomb shelter at the radio station. Bomb shelters were all over the town though and many stations would have had one. America was depending on the ham radio operators for help in such an emergency.
I cannot speak for what may have been, but I can guarantee you there is no such requirement now.
I work directly for a guy who oversees 60-some-odd stations. If this was a reg, I’d be tasked with making sure everyone was doing it.
I haven’t seen a Fallout Shellter sign on a building for about fifteen years. You’d find a rusty sign in the strangest places.
Back in the '70s I worked at a primary station for the Emergency Broadcast System (it would stay on the air when all the others went off.) The only emergency equipment we had was a backup generator in case the power went off, and a fire extinguisher. Both are quite ordinary for radio stations.
We had a Pepsi machine, so I guess that might count as emergency supplies. No firearms. You didn’t want to have firearms anywhere around deejays in the '70s.
I have worked in some newer and some older buildings. The oldest was WGAL Lancaster, PA, back in the early 90s and that place was built in the 50s. It had a fallout shelter and was marked as such; solid, impressive. Now I work in an affiliate in Washington, DC. It is a reletively new building. It has an auxiliary generator and most of the critical infrastructure is below ground. However I don’t think the building is all that solid (IMHO).
Yet however the station is located in NW DC and a less than decent sized thurmonuclear device should still not be big enough to critically damage the building (if lit off at the White House or Capitol).
Nevertheless I am glad I live NW of the city (prevailing winds) for my family’s sake; and I am in the country with independant means for water (well water) and electricity (generator) with personal stockpiles (1 month minimum), not that I consider such things…
Slightly off topic, but I remember walking through a sort of “disaster command center” at one of the nuclear power plants I was at in the Navy. It was pretty darned spooky – underground, with chalk boards that had painted sections saying such fun things as “Number of hostages & location”
They had a area for TV broadcasts with a standard blue curtain background with the podium with the seal on the front (either USN or DOE, I forget which).
I bet they had fifties-era rations stocked up in the back room.
Yeah, but what will you do when the zombies attack?
Not a problem, I’m married to the Zombie Cheerleader ™. I’m protected!
The BBC certainly had one. It was at their engineering training centre outside Evesham, Worcestershire.