Tag: Bomb Shelters

This is one of the best illustrations I’ve seen of a fallout shelter from the 1950s.  The dark lighting and grim, industrious nature of the family reflect the way a real family might have behaved during an attack.

Michael Amrine, who edited the well-regarded Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, wrote the text and provides sane, sober, and completely do-able advice.

Popular Science styled this home shelter as more than just a shelter:  they called it a “family foxhole” or “refuge.”

Unlike other bomb shelters, no major building was advocated–just some lally columns to support joists, bracing, shutters.  This was all about locating the right spot in your basement and how to stock it, not about building a new shelter from scratch in the backyard.

Click to Enlarge to 1125 x 762 px:

Source:  Popular Science March 1951

In addition to small residential bomb shelters built in backyards or in basements, some communities planned–and in some cases, built–larger shelters for the community.

Most community bomb shelters were based in existing buildings–church or school basements, in particular.  But this cutaway drawing shows a bomb shelter under a bridge built for this express purpose.

Click to Enlarge Image:

Source:  LIFE January 12, 1962

Nice, if low-resolution, cutaway drawing of a nuclear fallout (i.e., bomb) shelter from 1962.

Source:  Fallout Shelter Handbook by Chuck West.  Published by Fawcett Books.

Home-based nuclear fallout shelters combined everything that magazines needed in the 1960s to attract readers:  fear, home remodeling, and the opportunity for producing great cutaways.

Just going into your basement during nuclear attack would decrease your chance of radioactive exposure to 10% of the exposure if you had stayed outside.

By undertaking some pretty major home remodels, all located in your basement and all eventually unused, you could shrink that statistic another ten-fold.

Source:  Popular Mechanics October 1960