Fallout Shelters

Two weeks. That's all, two weeks. That's all the longer we were told we needed before we could emerge from our fallout shelters and resume our healthy and productive lives. Shoot, that's no more than an extended vacation. With free food, water (enough for a quart a day in public fall out shelters), and the finest in U.S. Government issue cots, the typical fallout shelter was almost as nice as a stay in the Hamptons.

The women of the typical household had the additional daunting task of ensuring that the family was well dressed at all times. Heaven forbid if the family was filmed filing into a fallout shelter with anything less than ironed creases and starched pleats.

In 1957 the Gaither Report was published to report on the relative nuclear strike capabilities and civil defense infrastructures of the United States and the U.S.S.R. The report outlined a clear advantage by the Soviets in civil defense, and the Eisenhower administration, which was none too concerned until that point, kicked in gear and started promoting fallout shelters for the home. The Civil Defense Department began publishing manuals demonstrating how to build a fallout shelter at home. In 1961, President Kennedy asked the Congress for $100 million dollars to build shelters.

Americans took to the Gaither report like white on rice. Fallout shelters were littering the landscape at a cost of anywhere from $100 to as much as $5000. The high end shelters were called suites and included such luxuries as telephones and toilets. Some Wall Street gurus predicted that fallout shelters could be a $20 billion a year industry in a few short years.

Preparing to live underground was the hottest thing since vacationing at the Bikini Atoll from 1946 and 1958.

On that tension filled night , in 1962, that John F. Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev roll up their sleeves and diplomatically bludgeon each other with fists full of words, an eccentric professor shepherds his family into the lavish fallout shelter under their home. Due to a bizarre set of circumstances, the family is doomed to live underground and out of touch for 35 years.

Shortly after their exit from the world upstairs, the professor's wife gives birth to a son. He spends 35 years growing up in that shelter learning to speak several languages, boxing, dancing, and the love of baseball.Having no radio, the family passed time by watching old black and white films via a projector.

The boy, okay a 35 year old man, emerges from a life stuck in 1962 into the bright world of 1997 and a romantic comedy ensues.

Going to school during the Cold War was a joy. Somehow, between games of Red Rover and rousing rounds of Now I Know My ABC's, our loving adults taught us about everything from personal hygiene to how to survive a nuclear attack. Those old black and white films that had scratches and jumped around either entertained us, bored us, or scared the living crap out of us, but I don't know of anyone that really received an education from those films.

Between learning how Joe's robust body odor could be prevented and how to protect ourselves in case of an A-Bomb attack, the film about Joe's odoriferous lifestyle really has been the more useful experience. We haven't been attacked by a nuclear weapon yet and most of us have made it to 50 plus years without offending anyone with foul aroma.

This, Duck and Cover was by far the most popular Civil Defense film produced, and it's no wonder. Geared to young school aged children, this movie was a box office smash in classrooms all across the country.

The race to harness the awesome power of the atom left a lot of unturned stones in the form of consequences. But, the imaginations of artists ran behind the pack and began baring those consequences to show the world.

Okay, so the most popular monster in movie history was born via A-Bomb testing in the Pacific Ocean and destroyed Tokyo at least fifteen times, was used as exploitation more than it was art. Big deal. The lovable cretin did make us all think about the possible aftermath results of nuclear testing and accidents.

What happens when the "powers that be" are not just a little mad, but also hold the keys to the Model A of total destruction? How about a system of measures that is supposed to be redundant as not to fail, but is actually so muddied by bureaucratic red tape that it actually freezes up? Catastrophe.

Throw in Stanley Kubric, Peter Sellers, and George C. Scott, and you have a volatile dark satire known as Dr. Strangelove. This is probably the most famous scene from the classic send up of the movie Fail Safe. Slim Pickens rides a bomb, and a young James Earl Jones calls out co-ordinates.

Thirty-five of my years were eclipsed by the cold war. After a while the threat of what was called Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) grew into a gestalt, but by the time it did, my life was touched deeply by the era.

By the time I was seven years old and walking the mile to school and the mile back, the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis was three yeas in my past. I know that at four I didn't know or care about the thin thread the world walked on the way to possible nuclear annihilation, but at seven I knew there was tension and that the world could come to a halt at any given second. I watched Duck and Cover for the first time at seven years old, and by eight I had seen a number of clips from A-Bomb testing in the deserts of America; I knew then that hiding under a school desk in Dayton Ohio wasn't going to save my behind.

A deep rooted fear began to creep in. I began to build my own fallout shelter and I kept myself tucked inside so that if the war did come, only the fake me would perish.

My father, a hardworking man from the Foothills of the Appalachians, taught me how to be a compassionate gentleman. He taught me how to appreciate a wide variety of music;from The Carter Family to Bach. He taught me to love football and he taught how to drive a car when I was ten. Even if he didn't know it, he also taught me to drink.

My father was an alcoholic for a large part of his life. I suspect he turned to the bottle out of fear, and I believe there were a large percentage of alcoholic fathers during that era. Fathers who were confronted with a world that changed nearly overnight. Fathers who faced the challenges of raising children in a world that hinged on fear and accelerated knowledge. Father's who had to look over their shoulders while protecting their children.

Once, when I was ten, I didn't sleep for three days. I cried at some overwhelming fear of death. I felt I was visited by some ethereal creature. No one knew; my family doesn't know that today. Somebody or something knew though, because since then I have seen death at work more than anyone should. A mother, her daughter and granddaughter in the backseat of a car. The old man across the alley. Two men in a small aircraft. My mother, and more.

Although I still drink on occasion, I quit all recreational drugs ten years ago. Death stopped coming to my doorstep as well. I stopped looking over my shoulder.

I am getting further from my fallout shelter with every new day.

Fail Safe
There is not much I can say that would truly introduce you to this next clip. The scene is riveting and chilling. No blood, no gore, but honestly earth shattering.