Gimme Shelter: Underground America

After World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union spent millions on nuclear weapons. The two superpowers eventually expanded their arsenals to the point where they could theoretically annihilate everyone on the planet–several times over. But where were the overt signs of these massive stores of weapons? Or of the infrastructure to deploy and launch them? It's a considerable irony of the nuclear age that so many resources were poured into creating something that rarely showed above ground. Much of the nuclear arsenal was hidden–missile silos, command and control centers, and government bunkers.

Then there was “civil defense.” Billions were spent to build and maintain massive underground bunkers where elected officials and others deemed critical to running a post-apocalyptic federal government might happily burrow during a nuclear exchange.

The government declined, though, to put much money into defending the average citizen. It was up to individual Americans to take up their shovels, dig up their backyards, and build their own fallout shelters replete with Spam, crackers, and emergency drinking water. Many communities designated certain public buildings as civil defense shelters, marking them with the famous sign–three equilateral yellow triangles on a black circle.

Today, much of underground America still exists–although often in an altered state. Thanks to arms control and defense conversion, old missile silos have been turned into just about everything–personal homes, high schools, a giant illicit drug lab, and even a scuba diving facility. And recent world events have sparked a resurgence in the popularity of both off-the-shelf and do-it-yourself shelters.

Civil defense has come a long way … or has it? The nature of the threats may have changed, but the advice citizens are given on how to survive attack doesn't seem to have. In the 1950s, Bert the Turtle, a Civil Defense spokescartoon, urged folks to “duck and cover.” Half a century later, the Department of Homeland Security tells us to keep plastic sheeting and tape on hand–a “duct and smother” campaign.

1 Ed Peden, who lives underground in a refurbished Atlas-E missile silo outside Topeka, Kansas, now sells other ex-missile bases, marketing the properties as “twentieth century castles.” 2 A backyard fallout shelter in the 1950s in New York. 3 The pre-fabricated, bare bones “Mini Blast & Fallout Shelter” comes ready-to-bury and was designed by volunteers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

4 During the Cold War, the North American Air Defense Command operated from inside Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado; today the mountain is home to four different commands. 5, 6 Beyond the 25-ton blast door lies the once-top secret 112,000-square-foot bunker built to shelter politicians in comfort below the posh grounds of the Greenbrier resort in White Sulphur Springs, Virginia. 7 Safety according to status—executives get similar treatment in Jon Cosner's tongue-in-cheek bomb shelter design from 1987.

For more on civil defense and fallout shelters, see “You're on Your Own–Again,” p. 34, and “Bunker Down,” p. 67.