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Very thoughtful post. I lived through this era, having been born in 1952. My family would have been in the demographic target, living in suburban Chicago with a nice big, back yard that could accommodate a shelter. I vividly remember seeing the ridiculous civil defense film Duck and Cover (youtube.com/watch?v=IKq…), and engaging in drill…
Very thoughtful post. I lived through this era, having been born in 1952. My family would have been in the demographic target, living in suburban Chicago with a nice big, back yard that could accommodate a shelter. I vividly remember seeing the ridiculous civil defense film Duck and Cover (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKqXu-5jw60), and engaging in drills where we hid under our desks when a warning siren sounded. I also recall reading about building a bomb shelter, perhaps in a newspaper or magazine. It was close to the time of the Cuban missile crisis, and my family was petrified--because my father had worked in X-10 at Oak Ridge as an electronics technician. During the cold war, he continued as an electronics engineer to work on missile components and underground nuclear testing. So I asked him, "Dad, why aren't we building a bomb shelter?" I was so disappointed when he said, "Honey, it wouldn't help." Another memory I have is that plans urged people to build zig-zag entrances to the shelters, since supposedly, radiation could not navigate around corners! I did not see that in the plans you found, however.