duck and cover

Despite the status accorded them as nostalgic, pervasive cultural anchors, the fallout shelter it seems has been magnified by the popular imagination and just over one percent of US households (as opposed to civil and governmental constructions) in the early 1960s had such emergency accommodations.
Paleofuture presents a rather interesting survey that polled people’s attitudes at the height of the Cold War, speaking to collected fears and wafts of the toxic masculinity and the paternalistic patriotism that not a statistically insignificant amount of respondents invoked as reasons to not construct a bunker or otherwise prepare for a nuclear disaster. Contrary arguments included what the neighbours might think of their architectural folly, that only a coward would try to hide from an atomic blast or perhaps most disturbingly that to do so would somehow contravene the will of God and Country, undermining faith in the nation and that it was not within man’s power to destroy himself or the world. The majority took a more philosophic tact, questioning the ability to withstand an attack or whether they would want to be heir to the aftermath.  Imagine there was a time when only the dissolute polluters and climate-change deniers needed to be disabused and the preppers weren’t playing the long game.