My House as a Teenager Had a Fallout Shelter

[MineralMan]

That's how old I am. The Cuban Missile Crisis stimulated my father into building a fallout shelter under our house in Southern California. I was 16 years old, and got recruited into mixing concrete for the project. It was a secret, and was built mostly at night.

It had all the necessary equipment from a hand-cranked ventilation system to a very large water storage tank. After it was built, it got stocked with non-perishable food, and other necessities. Nobody knew it was there, an there was no visible entrance.

I was not impressed, despite having mixed multiple yards of concrete. My sister was even less impressed, since she was not allowed to mention it to her boyfriend, the guy she ended up married to for 60 years. She insisted that she would not enter it if he couldn't.

About five years later, all the food was removed and it remained empty and useless from that time on. Of course, it was useless from the beginning, but that's what some people did in the face of the chance of a nuclear war.

Later, after I had moved away, they sold that house. My understanding is that the new owners were never told about the shelter, nor shown the hidden trap door that was its entrance. Strange times, those were. We're living in strange times once again...

[GusBob]

1. What was the address?

The guy bankrupted a casino for cripes sake
In his mind why spend all that money if you can’t use the nukes?
Plus he wants to out Putin, Putin. He jelly
Plus plus he can kill millions of brown or yellow people in an instant

Where the house we’ll move in

[MineralMan]

2. No idea who owns it now.

So, it will remain a secret. I'm the only one left who knows it's there, I think.

[GusBob]

4. I have made my prediction too

Plus plus plus he is crazy and there is nobody that will stop him

No offense but I’d rather die than live in California, I wasn’t serious if you couldn’t tell

[Midnight Writer]

3. When I was in Junior High, my duty was to go to the fallout shelter and inventory the supplies.

The shelter was in the basement of the school, and I went down every two weeks with a clipboard and count the containers. I got a little certificate presented to me at the end of the school year.

We had drums of water, sealed canister of saltines, Gieger counters, hygienic supplies, and some medical kits.

In grade school, we had the "duck and cover" drills, but I don't recall any bomb-specific drills in Junior High.

As an adult, we had a fallout shelter in the basement of our office building. Pretty dank and small, with the same provisions; saltines, water and meds. I got put in charge of that shelter's supplies, as well. They did away with that shelter around 1982.

[ananda]

5. When I was in grade school, there were ...

a couple of people in the area who built shelters.

We considered them crazy loons.

I also remember the school drills where we had
to do a drill and hide under a desk. Truly insane,
but everybody did it.

[MineralMan]

8. I remember those drills, too.

We thought they were ridiculous, too. Our parents were more worried.

[ananda]

13. We were also glued to the TV during the Cuban Missile Crisis

That was truly scary, but Kennedy was the right man
in the right place at the right time.

Now everybody is in the wrong place, doing the wrong
thing.

[3catwoman3]

30. As 5th and 6th graders, we girls were often more worried about...

...the boys in the class being able to catch a glimpse of our panties while we were crouched under our desks in that useless head-to-your-knees-butt-in-the-air position than we were about an actual nuclear attack.

Even as a 10 yr old, I was quite sure hiding under my desk wasn't going to do diddly if we were near a nuclear explosion.

[Jersey Devil]

6. Our town had a fallout shelter on the front lawn

I guess it was meant to serve as an example of how to build a fallout shelter. I remember it as a 15-16 year old and thinking it was very, very strange to see a concrete fallout shelter in the middle of the lawn in front of the municipal building right next to the sign that said, "Welcome to Bergenfield, the Friendly Town."

[Johnny2X2X]

7. Fallout shelters for the most part are useless.

They exist only for psychological purposes.

[MineralMan]

9. Yes, of course they are.

Frankly, once you came out of them, you might wish you had perished earlier. But, my Dad said, mix more concrete, so that's what I did.

Too weird.

[Johnny2X2X]

10. Yeah, and what about power for air filtration

That's what I think people forget, just having a vent isn't good enough, you need a fan and filtration system to replenish the air and keep toxins out.

And today's nukes, even if the blast is far enough away to spare you, the heat is going to cook you alive in most shelters.

[MineralMan]

11. Ours had a hand-cranked ventilation system.

Incoming air was filtered through a water bath. Outgoing air went somewhere else. It didn't require constant operation of the fan, though.

Still, it was a stupid plan, really. Fortunately, we never had to use it, so...

[get the red out]

12. I am 61

I remember asking my Dad where the nearest nuke would hit to our home in the middle of the eastern, KY Appalachia, if nuclear war happened. I somehow enjoyed those conversations. He thought that some big Chemical Plants in Charleston, WVA might be hit, or Louisville or Cincinnati. And then there was a documentary, called something like the 'morning after' about nuclear Holocaust. It scared my little sister to death and she couldn't get it out of her head! I tried to tell her what our Dad said, that the Russians don't want their children to die either.

Now we have the kind of government that really doesn't care how many people die, who they are, nor who kills them.

[jfz9580m]

14. A hand cranked ventilation system?

Thanks..these are my favorite posts. LuckyCharms posted one a while back about his dad extracting gold during salvage work.

It sounds a bit like the bomb shelters described in Richmal Crompton’s William series which was one of my favorites as a child. I didn’t really think about it that way at the time, but lighthearted children’s books as they are, WW2 is constantly playing in the background.

I thought of the Cuban Missile Crises yesterday. Duer leftstreet really chilled my blood by pointing out that these Armageddon types may just nuke something.

Don’t they get it? They seem to have no survival instincts. The classic GOP politician or industrialist is kinda sleazy and greedy etc.
But they aren’t suicidal..or at least not on such a short timescale. What’s with these guys?

[MineralMan]

15. Yup. It used the hand-cranked blower

from a blacksmith's forge. Moved an amazing amount of air.

[Martin68]

16. During the Cuban missile crisis my parents discussed converting our cellar to a shelter during conversation at the

dinner table. Meanwhile, at our elementary school, we all filed out of our classrooms, crouched down in the hallway faceing the wall and kissed our asses goodbye. We also got half a day off with a practice evacuation where we all got on the school buses and went home. My Dad was a CIA officer working out of Langley at the time during a stint in the US, so he understood the situation better than most people at the time.

[Vinca]

17. We had a neighbor who built one about that time. Everything old is new again.

[Sogo]

18. When I was a little girl, I begged my father to build a "fallout" shelter.

He was a big strong man, and in a big, booming voice said, "Hell no, we're not building a fallout shelter. If it comes to that, we'll die right along with the rest of them!"

My reaction was like the little boy in Home Alone, hands slapping cheeks as he screams....Or like the avatar image I just saved.

[MineralMan]

20. For My Father, It Was a Way for Him to Feel Like He Was Doing Something.

It occupied his hands and kept him from thinking about it. That was his way. He was a quiet man who rarely talked about anything that made him anxious. Instead, he always took some action to give him a better sense of security. I didn't understand that very well at the time, but I did later in my life.

For me, what the nuclear threat meant was recurring dreams of the light from nuclear bombs over the hills separating our town from the San Fernando Valley. We were about 25-30 miles north, by air. I kept my silence about those dreams, too. Like father; like son.

[hay rick]

19. We moved into a house that had a basement fallout shelter area.

My father got a new job in West Virginia in 1962. I was 17. My parents liked the house and the "fallout shelter" built by the previous owner didn't make the house unaffordable. The shelter area was pretty rudimentary- 3 block walls attached to the foundation, a door, and shelves for canned goods. In practice it became a storage area.

The fallout shelter didn't make us feel more secure. I felt more protected by the stalemate resulting from Mutually Assured Destruction and the expectation of obvious, rational nuclear weapons policy by our leaders, regardless of party- especially after the clear rejection of Barry Goldwater.

I no longer enjoy that kind of peace of mind. Trump only has two more important unused atrocities left in his quiver- stealing elections and using nukes. He will surely try stealing the elections in 2026 and I think the needs of his ego will override any compunction he has about playing with nukes if Bibi, Vlad, or Stephen blows in his ear.

[MineralMan]

21. Yes. Such structures were more a security blanket than real protection.

At the age of 80, my concern isn't about survival in such a situation. I deliberately avoided having offspring, though, based on my worries about what the future might hold. That has helped to some degree to keep anxiety at bay.

What Trump might do, I can't say.

[2na fisherman]

22. Not Just One Threat

Today's world is filled with new weapons of annihilation never considered during the 50's. Not even the billion dollar bunkers of the current elites will spare them from the omnicidal effects of 50 megaton nukes or fatal rays of the neutron bomb. Plus it's easy to imagine how a recombinant DNA pathogen may be engineered to unleash a new pandemic bug with a100% lethality and no cure. And persistent weaponized chemical nerve agents may be used to make large areas uninhabitable by causing instant mass casualties upon contact with a pinhead drop. And climate science tells us that our environment may be turned into a freezing wasteland with other effects not easily withstood even by modern "preppers" who could not foresee the magnitude of simultaneous destructive forces unleashed. So those bomb shelters of the 50's do seem hopelessly naive when faced with the real possibility of human extinction events triggered by such tools used in this "unthinkable" total war scenario.
There are no contingency plans to save us. Forget about FEMA. CD stands for certain death, not Civil Defense. And don't get me started on those who actually want this to happen to fulfill some misguided religious prophecy. Strange times, indeed.

[MineralMan]

23. Indeed. We Live in Precarious Times.

But, then, we have always lived in precarious times, it seems. One way or another.

That's why I remained childless.

[2na fisherman]

28. Me Too

I feel so sorry for those struggling to raise children in this dangerous age.

[keep_left]

24. For a bit of levity, here's the obligatory Donald Fagen song...

...about the Cold War: "New Frontier", from The Nightfly (1982). The video features a young couple spending the night in a '50s-style fallout shelter.

The entire record is a nostalgic look back at Fagen's youth in New Jersey from the '50s to the mid-'60s.

[MineralMan]

26. That's Brilliant! First Time I've Seen It.

I'll have to watch it a couple more times. Amazing!

[keep_left]

31. Despite the "old" Steely Dan style...

...that the kids thought was a little too '70s at the time (Fagen was one-half of Steely Dan, more or less), the "New Frontier" video was a big hit in the early days of MTV.

[kairos12]

25. I had one in the neighborhood.

We used to visit it. It eventually flooded. I told my kids about it, they thought I was fooling them.

[Walleye]

27. My uncle built one in the 60s in Delaware

We were very close to Dover Air Force Base. We thought it would be a target. My uncle had been in World War II as a flyer. He always had it all together.

[Laurelin]

29. We had one too. I was 5 when my parents got the new

House and put in a bomb shelter. It wasn't that fancy, just cinder blocks. No ventilation, just a reinforced section of basement. My parents used it as a wine cellar, which I thought (later) was the smartest use of bomb shelter ever. All that wine would surely make nuclear annihilation less painful. Looking back, I think my father also had tornadoes in mind. He grew up in Texas and Oklahoma. We lived in a DC suburb (hence the nerves about bombs) but we did get hurricanes, which do spin off tornadoes, so....