Civil Defense and fallout shelters has been a favorite topic on this blog. Back here, I posted the story of a contractor who built “Lorain’s first atom bomb shelter” in 1951.
By 1961, with the Cold War well underway, fallout shelters were quite popular. I’ve mentioned several times how my own parents were thinking about building one along with some good friends that lived behind us in Loretta Court.
But by the late 1960s, however, fallout shelters seems to be falling out of favor. And the people that built them were beginning to wonder if it was a mistake.
That ‘buyer’s remorse’ is the topic of the article below, which ran in the Journal back on October 5, 1969.
One person interviewed for the article notes, “When we were building the shelter,” says Dr. Edward Benedict, 73, a retired Newton, Mass., physician, “neighbors dropped by and gaped at the hole in the ground and just grunted. They thought I was a fool, and now I guess I was.”
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| Courtesy myfirefighternation.com |
The article also notes, “Fallout shelters turned out to be bad business, even for fallout shelter businessmen. For example, there was James Byrne, a Royal Oak, Mich., plywood wholesaler, who listened to his President and defense secretary, noted a Life magazine cover story which took the shelters seriously, and leaped forward to do his part.
“BYRNE OBTAINED the franchise to distribute shelters built by the Kelsey-Hayes Co. and thereafter bought 52 unassembled units for $525 each. He planned to sell them for $700 to retailers who would then market them to the public for about $1,000.
“But a funny thing happened on the way to the public.
““WE really worked for six months,” says Byrne. “We took our demonstrator model around to shopping centers on weekends. Nothing. We put it on display at two auto-agencies. The auto dealers thought it might attract attention. It didn’t. We advertised it. Nothing.”
In the end, Byrne couldn’t even give them away to friends.
The punchline of the article is that even then, in 1969, the Office of Civil Defense was still pushing a shelter program, asking Congress to provide $2.5 million in tax incentives to homeowners to construct fallout shelters in their new homes.
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| Vintage Kelsey Hayes Fallout Shelter Ad (Courtersy AmericanIkons.com) |
I think I might have turned mine into my own personal Batcave, someplace to hang out when the stress of other people got to be too much.
ReplyDeleteIf nuclear war had ever happened the people vaporized in an instant in the first blast would have been the lucky ones. Anyone who survived in a shelter would have just died a slow, agonizing death of starvation and radiation poisoning.
ReplyDeleteI like the mass shelter with the four-high bunk beds. All the men wearing suits and ties, grandma reading a book with sis...
ReplyDeleteI recall one satire of a Civil Defense poster from the late 1960's that informed citizens as follows:
ReplyDeleteUpon seeing the brilliant flash of a nuclear explosion in the sky:
1) Bend over;
2) Place your head firmly between your legs;
3) Kiss your ass goodbye.
See: https://dpvintageposters.com/cgi-local/db_images/posters/cache/2469-image-1200-1200-fit.jpg
And see: https://thoughtcatalog.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/headupass.jpg?w=786
...Given that Lorain itself would have been the target of at least two warheads and possibly three, the only way those shelters would have been of any real use would have been if they were in Wellington. ;)
ReplyDeleteThe people in the article saying they felt duped by the government into building a fallout shelter reminds me a little bit about people being required to get the Covid-19 vaccine now.I wouldn't be surprised if in a few years that it will come out that people didn't need the shot to begin with.And history repeats itself.
ReplyDeleteFeeling "duped" by the government into building a fallout shelter versus getting a vaccine for the common good in 2021 is a huge stretch in logic and reasoning.
ReplyDeleteThose fallout shelters had to get damp especially living in our wet weather type environment.I bet mold and mildew was rampant inside one of those shelters.If you didn't die from breathing the nuclear fallout I bet you sure would die from breathing in those mold spores.
ReplyDelete