Did your parents —or grand-parents— have one of these?

[pat grimshaw]

Nuclear missiles capable of striking most of the mainland USA were in operation in Cuba in mid-1962.

President Kennedy had already advised families on using fallout shelters via 'Life Magazine' in September 1961.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallout_shelter

 

[BiMike]

Some were built in the UK about that time for Government officals ! So that they were safe

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelvedon_Hatch_Secret_Nuclear_Bunker

 

[NineOfClubs]

Neither my parents or grandparents ever ventured that far.

But I remember television stories all about them.

I also remember my many teen nightmares about nuclear war.

 

[medic1]

^
I agree so much with what you have just posted i can still remember the nightmares after watching the so called educational tv programmes .

 

[NineOfClubs]

I still have the occasional nightmare about nuclear armageddon.

 

[doctorsun]

You gotta love how, even in a fallout shelter after a nuclear holocaust, the wife in the pictures is still cooking and making the bed. The 50s were wonderful.

 

[NineOfClubs]

You gotta love how, even in a fallout shelter after a nuclear holocaust, the wife in the pictures is still cooking and making the bed. The 50s were wonderful.

The "50's were wonderful" only if you weren't there.

Hell, we all thought we could die at any moment. Really.

 

[Luke Lighthart]

No, they preferred blowing up and melting. I guess it's better than slowly radiating, mutating, and rotting away.

 

[gsdx]

I was terrified as a kid. Russian attacks would have come from the north. American attacks would have come from the south. We were in the middle. So many nights as a young teen during the Cold War, I would sit out in the back yard, staring up at the night sky and watching for the missiles, wondering if I would ever see morning.

 

[Keelandson]

You gotta love how, even in a fallout shelter after a nuclear holocaust, the wife in the pictures is still cooking and making the bed. The 50s were wonderful.

Bunk beds for the kids and a bed for Dad, eight inches wide, supported by cans of Carnation. Mother sleeps on the floor, wrapped in the rest of the double-bed sheet she had to rip up for the patriarch's foam mattress after a heavy morning of cranking the grindstone to sharpen the knife before slaughtering the neighbour's cat.

Meanwhile, Dad, a fugitive from the DC comics stable, keeps checking the sky for pesky mushroom clouds.

 

[mbamike]

No. It was all dad could do to keep food on the table and clothes on our backs.

 

[rareboy]

Bunk beds for the kids and a bed for Dad, eight inches wide, supported by cans of Carnation. Mother sleeps on the floor, wrapped in the rest of the double-bed sheet she had to rip up for the patriarch's foam mattress after a heavy morning of cranking the grindstone to sharpen the knife before slaughtering the neighbour's cat.

Meanwhile, Dad, a fugitive from the DC comics stable, keeps checking the sky for pesky mushroom clouds.

Just another part of the American Dream.

I always loved the notion that people thought there was such a thing as winning or surviving a nuclear war.

I think we just went with duck and cover.

 

[SonOfSlobone]

No, we didn't have one, but oooh I wanted one so bad -- I had all these fantasies about spending months in some sort of glamorous shelter furnished in midcentury-modern with my "nuclear" family, just me & my parents and siblings. I used to draw up shopping lists of dehydrated foods we could stock up on...

 

[Keelandson]

We did "duck and cover" drills when I was in Kindergarten.

The schools didn't in my home town, though only 120 miles away that silliness was part and parcel with fire drills.

It was a large town/small city nestled among the grain stalks and snowdrifts, with straw between the populace's teeth, where their Sunday-go-to-meetin' clothes were flannel shirts with no missing buttons and the whole famn damily would ride to church on the Rumley Oil Pull. So they gave themselves airs of "we're targets of the godless commies" importance.

 

[SonOfSlobone]

We had a drill where they sent us home early so we could practice getting back to our houses in case of a nuclear attack. Can you imagine? It took me 20 minutes to walk home -- how wouldn't I have been a pile of cat shit by then?

 

[FanofFiction]

I don't think they were that popular in Canada. I personnally don't know anybody's grandparents ever owning one. They seem like a silly idea anyway. How long does it take for nuclear fall out to dissipate? And how long can you survive in a tomb in the ground. I'd rather be blown away in the initial blast.

 

[LilBit]

We didn't have one, but all of the schools and churches had one in the basement. We lived in a neighborhood with a high concentration of both, so we would have had our choice of fallout shelters, assuming we survived the blast.

 

[SLOPPYSECONDS]

Nuclear missiles capable of striking most of the mainland USA were in operation in Cuba in mid-1962.

President Kennedy had already advised families on using fallout shelters via 'Life Magazine' in September 1961.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallout_shelter

scary thing dat illustrations is nothin chnage

cause cultures these folks is just illustrations

if a one a folk these illustrations ever meet real they a no idea what do cause

it a why like these a illustrations so talk much they do

 

[rareboy]

if you weren't in the immediate blast zone, ducking and covering would help you avoid the glass shards from all your classroom windows exploding in

Under the absurd premise that you would have had ample warning that your windows would explode.

I remember the picture showing the 'protection' from fallout by hiding under your desk or a table.

I think they just made up some shit to give everyone the feeling that they weren't as helpless and hopeless as they really would have been.

What a stupid, stupid era.

 

[Keelandson]

What a stupid, stupid era.

Yeah, but the 1959 Chevrolet Impala convertible saved it.