My House as a Teenager Had a Fallout Shelter

[CC27]

MineralMan (151,086 posts)

My House as a Teenager Had a Fallout Shelter

That's how old I am. The Cuban Missile Crisis stimulated my father into building a fallout shelter under our house in Southern California. I was 16 years old, and got recruited into mixing concrete for the project. It was a secret, and was built mostly at night.

It had all the necessary equipment from a hand-cranked ventilation system to a very large water storage tank. After it was built, it got stocked with non-perishable food, and other necessities. Nobody knew it was there, an there was no visible entrance.

I was not impressed, despite having mixed multiple yards of concrete. My sister was even less impressed, since she was not allowed to mention it to her boyfriend, the guy she ended up married to for 60 years. She insisted that she would not enter it if he couldn't.

About five years later, all the food was removed and it remained empty and useless from that time on. Of course, it was useless from the beginning, but that's what some people did in the face of the chance of a nuclear war.

Later, after I had moved away, they sold that house. My understanding is that the new owners were never told about the shelter, nor shown the hidden trap door that was its entrance. Strange times, those were. We're living in strange times once again...

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100221084105

Your point rockhead?

[SVPete]

... Strange times, those were. We're living in strange times once again...

  MM really thinks Iran has the capability to attack the US?

[CollectivismMustDie]

I wonder if rockhead drives around without a jack and spare tire...

[ADsOutburst]

Strange times, those were. We're living in strange times once again...

True, but probably not for the reasons you think.

[FlippyDoo]

When my house was a teenager it wasn't thinking much about fallout shelters. It was more concerned with getting the attention of the female houses.

[Zathras]

Let  me guess. The plans were sold to his father by a salesman wearing a brown fedora and trench coat who worked for Vault-Tech.

[BannedFromDU]

[CollectivismMustDie]

Love it! Hi-5

[zeitgeist]

Ok who else remembers "Bert" the turtle"

If you click on the link you can find and play the 'film'.  @1951

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_and_Cover_(film)

We were in a first strike zone as a kid between a SAC base and Nuclear Sub base.

Trust me, ducking under the desk would have done absolutely no good at ground zero and even as kids we all knew it.

[DefiantSix]

Let  me guess. The plans were sold to his father by a salesman wearing a brown fedora and trench coat who worked for Vault-Tech.

I would guess that daddy ordered the plans out of the back of a Popular Mechanics...

[Airwolf]

Ok who else remembers "Bert" the turtle"

If you click on the link you can find and play the 'film'.  @1951

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_and_Cover_(film)

We were in a first strike zone as a kid between a SAC base and Nuclear Sub base.

Trust me, ducking under the desk would have done absolutely no good at ground zero and even as kids we all knew it.

I live and have lived all of my live outside of the military barely 20 miles from Offutt AFB. The former SAC HQ and now HQ for STRATCOM, One of the top ten targets on the Russian list of must hit. If MM thinks he was in any danger then he has no idea what it is like to live under the threat of a first strike.

[DLR Pyro]

the plot of the DUmmie's yarn sounds vaguely familiar to an Episode of the Happy Days where Howard Cunningham wanted to divert the family's vacation savings they were going to use to visit Carlsbad Caverns and instead build a bomb shelter because of the red menace.  Howard was insistent that the shelter was only for family and that Potsie, Ralph Malph and even the Fonz wasn't going to be allowed into it if the bomb was dropped. As a result Ritchie lost his friends and the family convinced Pa Cunningham to abandon his plans for a shelter.



https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0596156/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk

[BannedFromDU]

the plot of the DUmmie's yarn sounds vaguely familiar to an Episode of the Happy Days where Howard Cunningham wanted to divert the family's vacation savings they were going to use to visit Carlsbad Caverns and instead build a bomb shelter because of the red menace.  Howard was insistent that the shelter was only for family and that Potsie, Ralph Malph and even the Fonz wasn't going to be allowed into it if the bomb was dropped. As a result Ritchie lost his friends and the family convinced Pa Cunningham to abandon his plans for a shelter.



https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0596156/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk

     Your thirdhand account of a plot from a sitcom from 50 years ago is more entertaining than rockhead's blather.

[FlippyDoo]

I live and have lived all of my live outside of the military barely 20 miles from Offutt AFB. The former SAC HQ and now HQ for STRATCOM, One of the top ten targets on the Russian list of must hit. If MM thinks he was in any danger then he has no idea what it is like to live under the threat of a first strike.

Some of my friends and I talked about it when we were in high school in the 80s. We had an Army base to the north of us, a Naval base to the south of us, and an Air Force base to west of us. In our youthful minds, we figured that if the crap ever hit the fan that we probably wouldn't be around long enough to worry much about it so we just as well get on with life while we had it.

[SVPete]

Where I grew up was about 25 miles from Mather and McClellan AFBs, 35 miles from Travis AFB, and maybe 45 miles from Mare Island and the mothball fleet in Suisun Bay. AFAIK, my parents didn't give much thought to nuclear risk. Maybe they figured it was far above their paygrade and anything they might "do" would make a slight color difference in how toasty we'd be.

MM was just using his supposed family history as an irrelevant intro to, "We're living in strange times once again...".