The 3M corporation (best known today as the maker of Scotch tape and Post-It notes) manufactured 400,000 shelter signs, for which Uncle Sam paid less than a penny apiece. Blakeley of the Army Corp of Engineers, the signs featured three yellow triangles inscribed in a black circle-an arresting image approved by government psychologists.Īs a test, Blakely had envisioned the signs put up in downtown Manhattan “when all the lights are out and people are on the street and don’t know where to go.” And since half of Americans at the time were smokers, Blakeley specified the use of yellow reflective paint to make the signs visible in the glow of a cigarette lighter. Pittman, give “our presently unprotected population some form of protection.”Īmericans got their first look at that protection in January of 1962, when fallout-shelter signs began appearing in 14 cities across the country. While fallout shelters would do nothing to safeguard people from an actual bomb, they would, in the words of JFK’s civil-defense chief Steuart L. But the price tag for those was prohibitive ($200 billion by one estimate), so the feds opted for the next-best thing: shelters that would shield citizens from the radioactive particulates likely to be blowing around in the weeks after an attack. A surer way to protect Americans from a nuclear attack-which, with the Berlin crisis of 1961, looked increasingly possible-was to build reinforced-concrete blast shelters around the nation that could actually withstand an explosion. Kennedy was privately skeptical about the value of a public shelter program. They are the products of an ill-conceived program, designed to appease a population with little faith in that program even working. They’re tangible artifacts of that era.”Īnd though their original purpose has vanished, the signs still have much to say. “They outlasted everything, including the Berlin Wall. “They’re an enduring symbol of the Cold War,” says popular-culture historian Bill Geerhart, who since 1999 has maintained, a meticulous chronicling of the duck-and-cover era. The Fallout Shelter Sign Design Was Approved by Government Psychologistsĭented and faded now, the Kennedy-era fallout shelter signs still cling to the sides of buildings across the country. Options in the mid-range of expense, a few tens to a few hundreds of dollars per space include: (1) requiring modified limestone-mining practices, where appropriate, to generate useable shelter space near cities (2) encouraging the construction of earth-sheltered housing and other buildings, and (3) requiring and/or subsidizing the construction of dual-use basement shelter in new construction.Men install fallout shelter sign in Chicago. Fallout shelters might be mandated in appropriate new construction outside risk areas at little cost to the government. Government, with more » its present civil defense budget, remain: (1) maintain the inventory on fallout shelter and identify space with some blast protection potential (2) plan for crisis upgrading to improve existing space in a crisis, and (3) plan for construction of expedient shelter in a crisis. The very-low-cost options open to the U.S. The risk area population requiring blast protection is approximately 160 million. Single-purpose blast shelters cost in the high hundreds to low thousands of dollars per space, depending on size, hardness, location, and whether the shelter is part of new construction or retrofit. The principal technical barrier to construction of permanent shelters is cost. It was found that nuclear weapon effects and shelter design are well understood. The literature on the design, construction, testing, and cost of blast and fallout shelters was reviewed, and a bibliography of over 1000 documents was assembled. Existing FEMA research provides a solid foundation for successful crisis relocation planning, but the program can be refined by making suitable modifications in its locational, engineering, and institutionally specific = , In terms of upgrading existing buildings to fallout shelter status, great benefits are possible by turning away from a standard national approach and adopting a more site-specific approach. Exceptions are noted and remedies proposed. The FEMA concept of upgrading existing buildings to act as fallout shelters can, in principle, provide adequate shelter throughout most of the US. ![]() Options are evaluated for construction of fallout shelters allowing 10 ft/sup 2/ per person - such shelters are designed to provide 100% survival at projected levels of radioactive fallout. The availability of livable shelter space at 40 ft/sup 2/ per person (congregate-care space) by state is evaluated. ![]() This report presents a preliminary, detailed evaluation of various shelter options for use if the President orders crisis relocation of the US urban population because of strong expectation of a nuclear war.
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