I mean one leftover from the late 50's-early 60's. Has anyone here bought a house with one of these in the back yard? It seems like they would make a great gun room.
(I recently saw that Twilight Zone episode where the one family on the street had one and all the other neighbors were breaking the door in).

remember that twilight zone episode well [ iirc it had anti semtic overtones ]. when cleaning my parents old house out found tons of free public service literature on how to build and stockpile one. remember the duck and hide commie scare exercises in grammar school. shades of dr. strangelove, failsafe and on the beach movies. godzilla came out; the radioactive beast was symbolic of the usa atomic bombing of japan.

Living in Miami at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis (1962) it wasn't unreasonable to ask my Dad about building one. His response was, "first, tell me what you're going to do when your friends and their families want in, and we can't hold them. Are you going to be the one who says 'no,' or do you expect me to do that for you?"


Bullseye

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Five screws and 3-1/2 inches.

My mom had a house a few years ago that had a fairly extensive fallout shelter. Picture two large (5000 sq.ft. +) houses, set on five acres, about 200' apart. There was an entrance from the basement of each house, and a tornado shelter type entrance about halfway between. IIRC, there were five or six sleeping rooms, a storage room, a kitchen, and a living room. There were a dozen or more little air shafts sticking up into the yard. When she bought the house, she converted it to a Bed and Breakfast. There was talk about putting a couple of guest rooms in the shelter, but it had a couple of inches of water in it almost all the time. The cost of getting it dry wasn't enough to justify it's renovation. Kind of a neat idea, though.

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Insert short witty words here

I'm 64 and therefore from the "duck and cover" generation. That stuff was understandably taken quite seriously. I remember plenty of bomb shelter "hype" on T.V.. (the 4 hrs a day T.V. was on). I don't think anyone around here could afford a truly afford a livable shelter. I do know since most of this neighborhood has houses with coal chutes, and there's probably a lot of people with buried oil tanks they want to forget about.

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SOS USA

Great movies! I can remember them all, still have some brain cells On the Beach is a "classic"

"Duck and cover, duck and cover". Crouched out in the school halls with a jacket over our heads no Nuke is gonna get us.

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Still Running Against the Wind

Over in southeast IN there's a little town called Dillsboro. Just southeast of it was a cold war Nike missile base. The government auctioned it off and some guy bought it. I have a friend who lives there and is friends with the owner. I've been there once. As I recall it had 2 launch rooms, separated by concrete. Huge rooms with elevators/lifts to haul almost anything. He used it to store Corvettes and other toys he'd accumulated.

I believe it was designed to survive a near miss by a nuke.

I'm guessing if you want to make a bomb shelter, you should move to the red rock area of Utah. There are a number of homes and rooms dug out of the sandstone cliffs. Better still, if you need more room, just excavate until its big enough to suit you!

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Dick Burg

I was a 9 yr. Cub Scout when we toured a Nike site right on Lake Michigan in Chicago. I would not want to live through a bomb blast because of the giant ants.

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SOS USA

Huell Howser, who does a show out here called California Gold went on a private tour once of the very same old facility you saw. Probably the exact same plans. From the bottom floor he could look up to the top in one part because this was where the missle sat. It would make a great house!

We used to have an ambulance stationed in an old civil defense bomb shelter. The walls were two foot thick concrete with massive rebar inside them. I know because I helped with the renovation and ran a jackhammer for days. The door was 8 feet wide and about 8-10 inches thick solid steel. Imagine having to open that thing every time we had to run a call. No windows only the single door. we couldn't tell if it was light or dark out. It could have come a tornado outside and we wouldn't have known it.

I live in the house my wife grew up in- her father built
it in 1953.He had a commercial construction company
& put in a classic bomb shelter as a sales tool as well as
a possible haven should the Russians & Cubans move beyond
posturing. It had 4 pipe frame rope & canvas pull down
bunks,a chemical toilet & a hand cranked air pump.
Canned water,crackers,1st Aid kits,blankets-it was
pretty well set up.It was fashioned from what we used to
call a Buffalo pipe-a large corrugated galvanized pipe
that was big enough for a tall man to walk through.
About 20 feet down a metal ladder with a locking hatch
cover on top.
It's mainly a cockroach breeding facility now;we haven't
been down there in years.I know of at least one in
our neighborhood that I think he built. Cuba's missles
were 100 miles away when he built it.
Regards
turnerriver
SWCA 1426

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turnerriver

Geez, Truckem, it sounds like your mom lived at NORAD! That's way bigger than my normal house.

When we were reading Alas Babylon and Fail Safe, in high school, my English teacher told us that they had had one at their old house. Told us the address, and said you could still see it from the street. I drove by to look. Big hump about 3 feet high in the back yard, covered with sod. She said they had never been able to keep it dry, though. With the water table here at about 6 inches, I can understand. She said the last time she looked in it, before they moved, it had 5 feet of water in it.

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I always take precautions

Not a bomb shelter, but when I returned to Pa in '86, I bought an old 3 story farm house--it was built in the '20--on approx 70 arces of land, with well, and a couple of out buildings.

We completely renovated this home over a 10 year period of time. Modern wiring, new plumbing, additional insulation, new furnace & ducting, etc.

When we were doing the basement I found a sub-basement with a trap-door entry and stairway. This sub-basement wasn't a bomb shelter, but it was so well hidden I would never found it if not for the basement renovation. I believe that it was used as either a wine cellar or root cellar. I found a lot of old mason jars & and home made beer & wine.
The room damp & I keep it covered. I have placed several heavy items on the trap door. One of these I might find a use for this large room.

I guess nobody thought much or knew much about Nuclear Winter and fallout or half life.

Even if you did survive in the shelter, now what are you gonna do?? There is nothing left. Thank goodness we have "bug out bags" now

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Still Running Against the Wind

A couple of my high school buddies had bomb shelters in their back yard. We got bombed quite regularly... and it was a great place to to bring girls.

There’s not much below grade anything in Florida so I haven’t seen one in forever. But they were still doing the duck and cover when I went to school in the 80’s. I even remember some of the films showing the smiling little kids under their desks. We all thought it was a great break from lessons when they broke out the projector for any of those movies. Ignorance truly was bliss.

The rooms in the shelter weren't big. Most of it was just tunnels between the houses. I would estimate the living area of the shelter to be less than 800 Sq.ft.

The houses were built in the '30s by one of the banking families in town, and they were large.

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Insert short witty words here

No, we never had one nor have I seen one for a private family. However, I spent my career working aircraft plants and have been in some old ones that had old bunks and supplys. They were located under airport runways. Most of the workers in the plants around the airfields didnt know they existed.

I grew up in NYC housing projects during the 60's, my building was 14 stories with 12 apts per floor. They had 1 room in the basement in case of attack. How they thought we'd all fit in there, or maybe they didn't, is a mystery to this day.

Monroe, James Houses

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Sure you did

How about those yellow and black fallout shelter signs?

Rubber (?) curtains in the classroom.

Sometimes I think, "Sheesh. All today's kids have to worry about are a buncha lame ragtag terrorists. Back in the day, we worried about going toe-to-toe with the Rooskies in an all out nuclear war that was guaranteed to cause the end of the world!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" (Which kinda made you wonder why we were bothering to hunker down under our desks in Mrs Shacks second grade classroom, rubber curtains drawn Still, it beat studying fractions...)

When I was in High School a buddy had one in his back yard. We drained all the water out of it and used it as our Club House/Girl Pad.

It was a constant battle to keep water out and we ran a dehumidifer in it all the time.

It was pretty cool...

I never "knew" anybody that had one, however there was one built here in our community that was in a backyard along a well traveled city street. Had to have been put in in the early to mid fifties....and it is still there to bee seen to day. It appears to be a small, round cylindrical structure with a conical roof.

Drive by it every day.

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G.P. Charlie

Didn't have one growing up. Dad said that if the need arose to just go under the house.

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Forum consigliere

I grew up in the 50s and 60s, but I don't remember the "Duck and Cover"
drills. I do recall the "CD" radio system, with the messages to set your radio to either 640 or 1240 on the AM band. I recall the Twilight Zone episode-it ends with those involved finding out it's a false alarm and they have to confront their behavior. I recall at an early age hearing about M.A.D.-Mutually Assured Destruction-as the reason why the closet the two blocs came to a conflict was the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, and I recall that those who did build shelters were seen as rather paranoid, on a par with survivalists, and as others have noted, many shelters were not well thought out or constructed.

Yeah, once that gator under there eats you, you don't have to worry about nuclear fallout anymore.

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Insert short witty words here

I had a buddy in high school who's girfriends house had a bomb shelter. There was a rather large and heavy vault door in one wall of her basement that had stairs on the other side that went down about another 15 feet deep into the ground. These went to a tunnel about 25 feet long that led to a a room that was about 20 by 30 feet. Had a hand pump from a well to get water and hand crank air pumps. We used it for parties a few times.

There is a high school just north of Holton Kansas that is built on top of an old missile silo. Jackson Heights High School. There are several of the old atlas missile sights scattered around this area.

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Expect no quarter.

Many do not know how really, really close we were to the end during the Cuban Crisis.

A classic Twilight Zone with Burgess Meridith, "Time Enough at Last"

Time Enough at Last - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Still Running Against the Wind

Just a guest cottage with the original vacancy light and the large rental sign from the 1950's.

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Vaya con Dios

[QUOTE=OCD1;135831468]Many do not know how really, really close we were to the end during the Cuban Crisis


I was in the USAF and stationed in England at Wethersfield RAF base in 1962. Believe me when I say there were a lot of us there who knew exactly how close things were to pushing the big red button and it scared the living **** out of just about everybody (me included!).

I also worked in what was essentially an 'above ground' bomb shelter. Remember the SAGE buildings? Walls of solid concrete many feet thick, 1 or 2 stories underground, no windows, 1 door..

Ahh, Brings back memories when I moved to Fort Lauderdale, Florida in 63 as a kid. Cuba was 120 miles away.

How about Red Dawn great movie with the cubans invading.

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TDR911 Sigma Laser Systems

"One Minute to Midnight" by Michael Dobbs is a great book about the Cuban Missle crisis. Many facts about the situation I never knew before. Very scary.

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Cheers!

My uncle built a bomb shelter in NE Kansas in the late '50's[it never got used ]I was in the USAF in 1962 when the Cuban missle crisis came about.We patrolled the AF base in San Antonio then.Luckily[for us and the Cubans] no Cubans came ashore there!I live in an RV park now-no bomb shelters here.

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WALSTIB

My buddy's dad built one in their basement. They were pretty serious and had it stocked up pretty well. He also had a pretty nice collection of WWII guns he would let us help him clean although never took me shooting with them.

My doctor has his practice in his parent's old home. They were obviously wealthy and had an underground bomb shelter in the backyard. The entry was from the basement through a tunnel and they had ventilators built into the landscaping in the yard.
I have never been in it but he has described it pretty well to me. They also have the water problem and run pumps to keep it dry.

Growing up, the sirens that are now used to warn of tornados, etc., were always called "air raid sirens" or "Civil Defense sirens." It wasn't until I was an adult that we started calling them tornado sirens.

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LEO since 1981.

I can remember doing the duck and cover drills in the hall of my grade school, and in Jr. High.