March 23, 2006--Take Cover!
For someone who grew up in Brooklyn in the 1950s always worrying that the Russians were about to drop an Atomic Bomb on Times Square and who in school once a week took part in either a Shelter or Take-Cover Drill, you can imagine how disappointed I was to learn from the NY Times what had been stashed away in Fallout Shelters for those of us who would have been fortunate enough to have survived the blast, fire storm, and radiation. (See story linked below.)
First a little background for those of you too young to remember those days. It was agreed that anyone within say a five mile radius of a Hiroshima-size A Bomb blast would either be vaporized (literally) during the first few seconds or incinerated (the word in common use for this) in the subsequent fire storms. Those of us living beyond those concentric circles of devastation (and the Times as well as other papers would periodically publish maps of the city showing how these danger zones were demarked), would face the danger of radiation and the slow and agonizing death that would be our fate. That is, unless we could quickly enough get down into the Fallout Shelters that dotted our neighborhoods.
We practiced finding our way there wherever there was an Air Raid Drill, which would be announced by wailing sirens. We were told that once in those shelters there would be enough provisions such as canned food and water to keep us alive until it was safe to emerge and resume our lives. Perhaps in just two short months.
Descriptions of what that life would be like varied considerably. One prevalent view was that a full scale atomic attack on the US would “bomb us back to the Stone Age.” Not a pretty scenario, but at least we wouldn’t be vaporized.
So you will not be surprised to learn how eager I was to read the Times piece about this 50 year-old cache of shelter supplies because back then, though we were told these would be adequate, we were never shown any of them during the drills. And thus at the time I wondered about three things—where would we sleep and would we be warm; what kind of food would we have (I was a fussy eater); and how would we go to the bathroom since the apartment house basements that were serving as Fallout Shelters did not have bathrooms?
Now I know.
From the supplies sequestered under the Brooklyn Bridge (never mind it is less than a mile from the Brooklyn Navy Yard which was reputed to be a prime Soviet target and thus likely to have been incinerated) I understand that we would have had paper blankets to keep us warm, high-calorie crackers to eat (352,000 of them which would have lasted for quiet some time if we didn’t have second helpings); and five gallon tin cans in which to potty.
You can only imagine my disappointment. I am OK with the blankets; but not about the other arrangements. Five-gallon cans? How long would that work? And cookies? For dessert, fine; but what about some cans of Bumble Bee Tuna (it didn’t have to be the Solid Albacore version) or some Spaghetti Os?
But then I got it—at the very end of the Times story is a quote from Graham Allison, who was at the time an Assistant Secretary of Defense in which he confessed that Fallout Shelters would have been ineffective in the event of nuclear war; but “At least people would think they were doing something, even if it didn’t have any effect.”
Sort of like today, no?
First a little background for those of you too young to remember those days. It was agreed that anyone within say a five mile radius of a Hiroshima-size A Bomb blast would either be vaporized (literally) during the first few seconds or incinerated (the word in common use for this) in the subsequent fire storms. Those of us living beyond those concentric circles of devastation (and the Times as well as other papers would periodically publish maps of the city showing how these danger zones were demarked), would face the danger of radiation and the slow and agonizing death that would be our fate. That is, unless we could quickly enough get down into the Fallout Shelters that dotted our neighborhoods.
We practiced finding our way there wherever there was an Air Raid Drill, which would be announced by wailing sirens. We were told that once in those shelters there would be enough provisions such as canned food and water to keep us alive until it was safe to emerge and resume our lives. Perhaps in just two short months.
Descriptions of what that life would be like varied considerably. One prevalent view was that a full scale atomic attack on the US would “bomb us back to the Stone Age.” Not a pretty scenario, but at least we wouldn’t be vaporized.
So you will not be surprised to learn how eager I was to read the Times piece about this 50 year-old cache of shelter supplies because back then, though we were told these would be adequate, we were never shown any of them during the drills. And thus at the time I wondered about three things—where would we sleep and would we be warm; what kind of food would we have (I was a fussy eater); and how would we go to the bathroom since the apartment house basements that were serving as Fallout Shelters did not have bathrooms?
Now I know.
From the supplies sequestered under the Brooklyn Bridge (never mind it is less than a mile from the Brooklyn Navy Yard which was reputed to be a prime Soviet target and thus likely to have been incinerated) I understand that we would have had paper blankets to keep us warm, high-calorie crackers to eat (352,000 of them which would have lasted for quiet some time if we didn’t have second helpings); and five gallon tin cans in which to potty.
You can only imagine my disappointment. I am OK with the blankets; but not about the other arrangements. Five-gallon cans? How long would that work? And cookies? For dessert, fine; but what about some cans of Bumble Bee Tuna (it didn’t have to be the Solid Albacore version) or some Spaghetti Os?
But then I got it—at the very end of the Times story is a quote from Graham Allison, who was at the time an Assistant Secretary of Defense in which he confessed that Fallout Shelters would have been ineffective in the event of nuclear war; but “At least people would think they were doing something, even if it didn’t have any effect.”
Sort of like today, no?
posted by Steven Zwerling at
12:14 PM
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