# Whatever Happened to Fallout Shelters Built in the 1950's? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 8, 2009, 8:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatever-happened-to-fallout-shelters-built-in-the-1950s/520504 "2009-12-08T20:48:49Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2009, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatever-happened-to-fallout-shelters-built-in-the-1950s/520504/41 "2009-12-09T16:44:11Z")
> [@mo50](#): > > Anyone remember that Twilight Zone episode where there’s a report of a nuclear attack & only one guy in the neighborhood has a bomb shelter? If not that, then the Simpsons episode where the town all crowds into Flanders’ shelter to escape the giant meteor? ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2009, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatever-happened-to-fallout-shelters-built-in-the-1950s/520504/42 "2009-12-09T16:55:03Z")
> [@Spartydog](#): > > What is the appeal in surviving a post-nuclear holocaust? > > Seems to me it would be a lot like living in Hell. Why would anyone want that\> [QUOTE= General Buck Tugidson from Dr. Strangelove] Mr. President, I’m not saying we wouldn’t get our hair mussed. But I do say no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops. Uh, depending on the breaks. [/QUOTE] Conventional wisdom at the time was that the actual bombing would wipe out the big cities like New York and Chicago, and some military bases and other strategic targets. Once that was over, the radiation would disappear almost immediately, and the fallout would settle out in a couple of weeks as dust or in the rain. Then we’d all come out of our fallout shelters, some of us would stick around to rebuild the cities, and the rest of us would move to places that hadn’t been wiped out – like the Appalachians or Kansas – and grow food in gardens or on small farms until we had rebuilt the American Way of Life. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2009, 6:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatever-happened-to-fallout-shelters-built-in-the-1950s/520504/43 "2009-12-09T18:18:44Z")
I recently was involved in a project that involved re-wiring a house built in the 1940’s. Among other features was a “storage closet” in the basement built of a double-layer of cinderblocks right in the middle of the basement. It may well have been originally intended as a fallout shelter, and certainly would do nicely for a tornado shelter. It is WAY overbuilt for a storage room. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2009, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatever-happened-to-fallout-shelters-built-in-the-1950s/520504/44 "2009-12-09T18:31:46Z")
> [@](#): > > It wasn’t really misguided. Obviously if a nuclear bomb was detonated point blank above your shelter, it wouldn’t matter - but there’s a huge radius (far bigger than the immediately kill zone) where the biggest dangers of a nuclear blast are stuff like flying glass, fire, and eventually, fallout. You could be protected in a fallout shelter in anything that wasn’t around the immediate vicinity of the strike itself - they would’ve saved a lot of people. Yeah, but you could accomplish that in a house, too. What you’re trying to keep out is just _dust_. You don’t need an underground fortress for that. ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2009, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatever-happened-to-fallout-shelters-built-in-the-1950s/520504/45 "2009-12-09T18:43:56Z")
> [@Argent\_Towers](#): > > I would love to buy a house someday with an old fallout shelter and renovate it into a separate basement-lounge. I would totally do it all up in 1970s-era quasi-modernist Kubrick-esque decor, too, like Alex’s room from _A Clockwork Orange._ I dunno about fallout shelters, but you can buy decomissioned [nuclear silos](http://www.missilebases.com/properties) these days. Perfect for any and all evil geniusy endeavours. Or Fallout LARPing. ---
**Author:** ![SirRay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/cc9497/32.png) [@SirRay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SirRay)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2009, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatever-happened-to-fallout-shelters-built-in-the-1950s/520504/46 "2009-12-09T18:45:22Z")
> [@mo50](#): > > Anyone remember that Twilight Zone episode where there’s a report of a nuclear attack & only one guy in the neighborhood has a bomb shelter? It depicts the neighbors all turning on him and descending into this panicked primal weirdness. Then it turns out to be a false alarm, of course. Great Rod Serling mindf\*\*k! Was that the original 1960s series (I guess, since you mention Rod Serling) - I do remember the 1980s version (which had a number of post-apocalyptic segments) where some guys were in a fallout shelter, and became paranoid (enough that one of them kicked the other out into the devastation) - the twist in this case is that there was a nuclear explosion, but from an accident involving a US bomber and that one explosion ended up preventing the war - they ended up covering the devasted area with a containment casement called a ‘Peace Dome’, and apparently the paranoid guy was still there alone in his shelter. [Shelter-Skelter](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shelter_Skelter_(The_Twilight_Zone)) ---
**Author:** ![SenorBeef](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senorbeef/32/2220_2.png) [@SenorBeef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SenorBeef)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2009, 7:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatever-happened-to-fallout-shelters-built-in-the-1950s/520504/47 "2009-12-09T19:18:26Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Yeah, but you could accomplish that in a house, too. What you’re trying to keep out is just _dust_. You don’t need an underground fortress for that. This is true, to an extent. A house with taped up windows and doors with a filtered air source would make a half decent fallout shelter. But… you could have a shelter always ready to go, whereas you wouldn’t want your windows and doors taped up for day to day operations - and you might not get enough warning time to do it. The advantages of a bunker are still that it put a lot more ground and concrete between you and the ambient radiation, it provided some protection from blast/overpressure, and it was relatively immune to fire - which is a big concern because everything would be burning after the flash heat from the explosion started many fires all over the place. ---
**Author:** ![alphaboi867](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alphaboi867/32/3898_2.png) [@alphaboi867](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alphaboi867)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2009, 7:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatever-happened-to-fallout-shelters-built-in-the-1950s/520504/48 "2009-12-09T19:30:13Z")
> [@Spartydog](#): > > What is the appeal in surviving a post-nuclear holocaust? > > Seems to me it would be a lot like living in Hell. Why would anyone want that\> I was watching an interview with John Waters (I don’t remember if the documentary was about him or the Cold War) and mentioned how his parents had a professionally build shelter installed and his mother stocked it. His biggest fear wasn’t radiation poisoning or having to shoot their neighbors. It was having to crap in a bucket in front of his parents. :smack: Were actual building permits issued for fallout shelters? I remember hearing something about people getting permits for stuff like septic tanks to try and keep their shelter a secret. ---
**Author:** ![Jimmy\_Joe\_Meager](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/bb73d2/32.png) [@Jimmy\_Joe\_Meager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jimmy_Joe_Meager)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2009, 8:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatever-happened-to-fallout-shelters-built-in-the-1950s/520504/49 "2009-12-09T20:07:49Z")
In the basement of one of the “old” buildings of SUNY Potsdam (either Kellas, Merritt, or Timerman, can’t remember which), way way down in the sub-basements where the students aren’t supposed to go (but we did - via the tunnels from the physical plant), is what I believe to be the remnants of a fallout shelter. It looked like… a basement. Walls, floors, and ceiling were made of cement, there were a few “rooms” sectioned off by either cement or cinder block walls. It was mostly empty, some of it was used for storage, but there was one extraordinary feature that couldn’t have been meant for anything else. It was a huge cylindrical tank. Picture a small farm silo lying on its side, and capped flat on each end. It was 8-10(?) feet tall and twice as long. There were metal steps leading from the floor to a narrow walkway along the top. Up there were toilet seats, maybe five or so, affixed over corresponding holes in the top of the tank. It was a toilet. There was no plumbing for emptying the tank. It was obviously intended to collect and store lots of human waste. We assumed that there would’ve been chemicals for it among the fallout shelter supplies (of which there were none by the time we saw this – late 1980’s). We also assumed that after living underground for a few days to weeks, and re-emerging to a post-nuclear apocalyptic landscape, that having a tank full of sh\*t in the basement would be the least of their worries. ---
**Author:** ![filling\_pages](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/b9bd4f/32.png) [@filling\_pages](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/filling_pages)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2009, 8:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatever-happened-to-fallout-shelters-built-in-the-1950s/520504/50 "2009-12-09T20:36:49Z")
My mom, who was a teen in Winter Haven, FL in the 60s and early 70s, remembers several of her friends having bomb shelters in their backyard. By that time, most were either just ignored or storage space, but a few were in use as practice spaces for her friends’ bands. Makes perfect sense - thick walls, plenty soundproof. ---
**Author:** ![GythaOgg](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/49beb7/32.png) [@GythaOgg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GythaOgg)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2009, 1:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatever-happened-to-fallout-shelters-built-in-the-1950s/520504/51 "2009-12-10T01:32:24Z")
[THIS PAGE](http://www.civildefensemuseum.com/) has some fascinating information on old fallout shelters, including lists of supplies, photo tours of some old shelters, and other interesting stuff. This is a serious hobby for some, and there’s an active trade in shelter and Civil Defense collector’s items. I’m especially fascinated by the section about the packaged emergency hospitals. Apparently, every now and then another one turns up cached in a storage area or shed somewhere. A complete hospital, 1960s-style, packed in boxes…kind of spooky to think about. ---
**Author:** ![Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bosda_di_chi_of_tricor/32/16845_2.png) [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2009, 10:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatever-happened-to-fallout-shelters-built-in-the-1950s/520504/52 "2009-12-10T10:33:37Z")
> [@GythaOgg](#): > > [THIS PAGE](http://www.civildefensemuseum.com/) has some fascinating information on old fallout shelters, including lists of supplies, photo tours of some old shelters, and other interesting stuff. This is a serious hobby for some, and there’s an active trade in shelter and Civil Defense collector’s items. > > I’m especially fascinated by the section about the packaged emergency hospitals. Apparently, every now and then another one turns up cached in a storage area or shed somewhere. A complete hospital, 1960s-style, packed in boxes…kind of spooky to think about. We never tried to use them? Not even after 9/11 or Katrina? ---
**Author:** ![GythaOgg](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/49beb7/32.png) [@GythaOgg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GythaOgg)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2009, 1:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatever-happened-to-fallout-shelters-built-in-the-1950s/520504/53 "2009-12-10T13:37:34Z")
> [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](#): > > We never tried to use them? > > Not even after 9/11 or Katrina? By that time, many of them had been forgotten, decomissioned, raided for parts or drugs, the supplies had deteriorated, or they had been stored badly and just weren’t in any kind of shape to be usable at all…canvas stretchers rotted through, surgical supplies no longer sterile, etc. They were also -incredibly- outdated in terms of modern medicine, real antiques. These were supplies put in place during the Kennedy administration and then basically largely forgotten about (like Civil Defense fallout shelters). According to the article on the site, some of the supplies from a few recent discoveries of these caches have gone to military reenactment groups. It’s really interesting reading. ---
**Author:** ![GreasyJack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/df705f/32.png) [@GreasyJack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreasyJack)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2009, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatever-happened-to-fallout-shelters-built-in-the-1950s/520504/54 "2009-12-10T18:40:15Z")
> [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](#): > > We never tried to use them? > > Not even after 9/11 or Katrina? For that matter, how did fallout shelters work in places like New Orleans with high water tables? Were they just SOL? ---
**Author:** ![UltraVires](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecccb3/32.png) [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2009, 6:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatever-happened-to-fallout-shelters-built-in-the-1950s/520504/55 "2009-12-10T18:51:04Z")
> [@SirRay](#): > > Was that the original 1960s series (I guess, since you mention Rod Serling) - I do remember the 1980s version (which had a number of post-apocalyptic segments) where some guys were in a fallout shelter, and became paranoid (enough that one of them kicked the other out into the devastation) - the twist in this case is that there was a nuclear explosion, but from an accident involving a US bomber and that one explosion ended up preventing the war - they ended up covering the devasted area with a containment casement called a ‘Peace Dome’, and apparently the paranoid guy was still there alone in his shelter. [Shelter-Skelter](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shelter_Skelter_(The_Twilight_Zone)) I saw that one as a kid and it scared the bejebus out of me. The guy kept checking the radiation meter (whatever that’s called) and it didn’t go down. He was slowly going even more crazy than he already was. ---
**Author:** ![Jinx](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/c6cbf5/32.png) [@Jinx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jinx)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2009, 3:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatever-happened-to-fallout-shelters-built-in-the-1950s/520504/56 "2009-12-11T03:09:13Z")
They’re now called “Starbucks”! 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Shagnasty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2009, 4:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatever-happened-to-fallout-shelters-built-in-the-1950s/520504/57 "2009-12-11T04:28:55Z")
> [@GreasyJack](#): > > For that matter, how did fallout shelters work in places like New Orleans with high water tables? Were they just SOL? I never thought about it but you can’t have underground facilities in New Orleans at all. You can’t even have below ground graves in most of the city. I never saw any nuclear fallout shelter signs when I lived there but I assume, when they did exist, it was just somewhere near the bottom of the larger buildings. Homeowners couldn’t have a personal one. There are a few “basements” in New Orleans but they are still above ground. The 1st floor is simply raised to give storage space below which is where I guess you could store provisions. Large parts of the Gulf Coast are like that to a somewhat lesser degree. ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2009, 4:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatever-happened-to-fallout-shelters-built-in-the-1950s/520504/58 "2009-12-11T04:53:02Z")
> [@kunilou](#): > > Conventional wisdom at the time was that the actual bombing would wipe out the big cities like New York and Chicago, and some military bases and other strategic targets. Once that was over, the radiation would disappear almost immediately, and the fallout would settle out in a couple of weeks as dust or in the rain. Then we’d all come out of our fallout shelters, some of us would stick around to rebuild the cities, and the rest of us would move to places that hadn’t been wiped out – like the Appalachians or Kansas – and grow food in gardens or on small farms until we had rebuilt the American Way of Life. Yeah, but of course the first order of business would be to go kick some Russkie survivor ass! :mad: 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2009, 5:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatever-happened-to-fallout-shelters-built-in-the-1950s/520504/59 "2009-12-11T05:26:52Z")
> [@Shagnasty](#): > > I never thought about it but you can’t have underground facilities in New Orleans at all. You can’t even have below ground graves in most of the city. I never saw any nuclear fallout shelter signs when I lived there but I assume, when they did exist, it was just somewhere near the bottom of the larger buildings. Homeowners couldn’t have a personal one. There are a few “basements” in New Orleans but they are still above ground. The 1st floor is simply raised to give storage space below which is where I guess you could store provisions. Large parts of the Gulf Coast are like that to a somewhat lesser degree. Fallout shelters aren’t bomb shelters. They aren’t built underground to provide blast protection, they are built underground because the soil makes for free shielding for the walls. That way you only need to pay for shielding for the roof. You can achieve exactly the same effect by making a mound of soil above ground. In areas with high water tables that’s often exactly what they did. Build a concrete box and mound soil up over it in an artificial hillock, then line he roof with very thick concrete. This makes them more expensive, and of course they take up more space, but it’s still perfectly feasible. ---
**Author:** ![Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bosda_di_chi_of_tricor/32/16845_2.png) [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2009, 11:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatever-happened-to-fallout-shelters-built-in-the-1950s/520504/60 "2009-12-11T11:08:50Z")
> [@Jinx](#): > > They’re now called “Starbucks”! 😃 Oh, _very_ nice! \ Also like the Location listing. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatever-happened-to-fallout-shelters-built-in-the-1950s/520504.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatever-happened-to-fallout-shelters-built-in-the-1950s/520504.md?page=4)