Remember When

Bomb shelters kept America feeling safe

By Cookie Wright

Not since the 1950s and '60s have we Americans felt so anxious and so vulnerable as we do now. During those years of the Cold War, my generation's fears were fanned by Hollywood and the sci-fi film industry that constantly promoted films that featured nuclear holocausts.

Today, media bombard us in the same way with an overabundance of frightening news that, like those sci-fi films of yesterday, fills the public with fear and trepidation.

But not to worry ... we've been through this sort of thing before, and we'll get through it again.

During the 1950s and '60s, America was faced with the fear of a nuclear war. A generation of baby boomers was raised and schooled in this ominous "duck-and-cover" atmosphere.

March winds and April showers bring May flowers, or so the proverb goes. But in the spring of 1952 they may have brought something else as well: nuclear fallout. America had begun testing the hydrogen bomb.

The following year, amid a technological race with the U.S., the Soviet Union exploded a hydrogen bomb. It also created an intercontinental ballistic missile and, by 1957, put Yuri Gagarin in the first orbital flight around the earth.

As the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union intensified, fear of the bomb and anxiety about the prospects of a nuclear war began to weigh heavily on the minds of the American public.

Media advertisements and Civil Defense documentaries sanctioned by the U.S. government suggested that the building of bomb shelters was a viable way for Americans to protect themselves during a nuclear attack. Capitalizing on America's paranoia about the bomb, some construction companies jumped on the bandwagon and began hawking the backyard bomb shelter.

Warning sirens blared out every month, in every town across the country, announcing air-raid drills. Duck-and-cover practice was routine in every schoolhouse in America. The bomb had become a familiar, albeit unnerving, part of life.

Hollywood filmmakers, aware of the public's fear and fascination with atomic energy, began producing films with nuclear war themes, films such as Dr. Strangelove, The Last Man on Earth, The Day the World Ended and The Atomic Kid.

Television got in on the act with programs such as The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits and One Step Beyond--prime time that touched TV viewers' dark side and played to their worst fears. In The Twilight Zone's premiere episode, actor Earl Holliman starred as a young astronaut who returns to Earth after a nuclear holocaust to find the world devoid of life.

"Home sweet home" has always stood as the core of American life. Despite the "Red Threat," Americans were buying houses and settling into suburbia in search of the good life. Stressed-out, urbanized citizens, worried about the bomb, began constructing home fallout shelters. Keeping up with the Joneses took on a whole new meaning in the '50s and '60s: Who could build the better bomb shelter soon became the new status symbol among the affluent. These bunkers served as silent witnesses to a nation's ill ease.

Families who owned well-stocked shelters lived with the constant worry that, during a nuclear holocaust, they'd be invaded by friends and neighbors who neglected to build bunkers of their own. Who to let in? Who to lock out? These questions plagued the bomb-shelter owner. Paranoia and suspicion soon generated feelings of distrust and anxiety.

In the late 1950s, America was reaching for the stars while its people were watching the skies. On Oct. 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the world's first artificial satellite. The United States launched its own Explorer 1 into orbit on Jan. 31, 1958. The Cold War race for supremacy of the skies had begun. The following decade, America set its sights on the moon.

Though Americans were enjoying fun fads like hula hoops, lava lamps, go-carts and go-go boots, a doomsday mentality prevailed.

It was a somber President Kennedy who addressed the nation Oct. 22, 1962. Citizens already made nervous by the raging Cold War listened as the president told of the Soviet missile buildup in Cuba and how, in retaliation, he had surrounded the island with American military power. In response, an angry Nikita Khruschev dispersed Soviet warships to Cuba. A military showdown with the United States was imminent.

I remember that fateful night especially well, since it was my 20th birthday. Instead of celebrating, my family and friends sat silently mesmerized as President Kennedy delivered his foreboding television address to the nation. Afterward, we all sat in numbed silence. Was our greatest fear about to be realized? Was nuclear war forthcoming? My party guests made a hasty exit for home that night to spend the next crucial hours with their families, and to pray.

Like most of America, I stayed awake all night listening to the radio news bulletins. (TV signed off the air at 1 a.m. in those days). I hoped for the best but feared the worst. As I listened, I lamented all night long that Dad hadn't built a bomb shelter for his family.

Somehow, through divine intervention and political compromise, by next morning the crisis had passed, and Khruschev agreed to withdraw his troops and missiles from Cuba.

In 1963, a test-ban treaty was reached by world powers. By 1972 the United States and Soviet Union began holding Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT). The two powers agreed to limit antiballistic missiles and nuclear weapons.

We Americans began to lose our naivete in the 1960s, a decade full of turmoil and unrest that saw the assassinations of our most charismatic and popular leaders.

By the time the 1990s rolled around, we were a wiser and more informed nation. Educated by worldwide media, we came to realize that the building of fallout shelters in our back yards did little to protect us from nuclear holocaust.

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