Bomb Shelters in the Home

Months ago, on a History Channel on the show ‘Secret Passages of the Cold War’, they featured a house that was built in the late 70’s which had a massive bomb shelter built underneath it.

I’ve always had a fascination with the late 60’s Cold War era affects on society within the US and the feeling of isolation this government sponsored fear crafted from it. Nostalgic images run through my mind of Civil Defense decorated ‘Block Wardens’ marching through streets delegating innocent civilians to the nearest nuclear bomb shelter while air raid sirens blast warnings of imminent attach, and teachers telling children to get under their desks and protect their heads as advertised in the jingle of ‘Duck and Cover.’ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_and_Cover_(film))

Information about much of the facilities, documents, supplies, and actual items from this era can be found here: http://www.civildefensemuseum.com/

A timeline of events related to this era can also be found here: http://www.coldwar.org/articles/60s/index.asp

The Doctor and engineer that owned the house spent some 20 years crafting an underground bomb shelter under his home that was significantly larger than the home itself. He had a fascination like mine with this era which started the desire, but I think it morphed into something greater after he had started.

Done in secrecy as a nightly vigil, he would pack 5 five gallon buckets of excavated dirt into the trunk of his car and dispose of them during the day to keep the work secret. He did all of the work in the subterranean fortress by hand, including metal fabricating, cement mixing (using an extra dense cement compositionl), water mitigation, air treatment, and stockpiling of necessities.

He had started with a small hole in the garage floor using a cement saw, but it grew to encompass three separate sub-floors under the house and spanning over 1,600 square feet.

All entrances to the shelter were hidden from within the house from multiple locations (garage, a moving panel in basement bathroom, behind a bookshelf in the kids room, etc).

The house is now up for sale, but some wonderful information about it can be found here:

http://www.oneofakindhouse.com/

jp