One Nation Underground: The Fallout Shelter in American Culture

6 The Shelters That Were Not Built, the Nuclear War That Did Not Start

c h a p t e r 6 The Shelters That Were Not Built, the Nuclear War That Did Not Start Americans had excellent reasons to retreat underground. The day-to-day tensions of the Cold War, the occasional full-blown crises, the ubiquitous reminders in the press of the consequences of nuclear war, and the obvious fact that nuclear weapons were going to be around for a long time should theoretically have provided ample motivation for Americans to become a sheltered nation. Yet the United States did not build a system of community shelters, nor were private shelters built in the numbers expected.AsThomas Hine has observed, the fallout shelter issue “prompted far more introspection than excavation ,” and for complex reasons Americans simply did not respond as many thought they would.1 Certainly, entrepreneurs calculated that selling home fallout shelters was a can’t-miss proposition. One illustration of the perils of a sure thing, and ultimately the public’s ambivalence about fallout shelters, could be found in the experiences of James J. Byrne, a plywood salesman from Royal Oak, Michigan. Byrne believed that there was a great business opportunity in fallout shelters, and obtained a regional dealership for Kelsey-Hayes pre186 fabricated fallout shelters in 1961. Byrne ordered fourteen unassembled shelters, sold thirteen to dealers around the state, and kept one to use as a display model. Kelsey-Hayes had assured Byrne that it would take two people two to four hours to assemble the shelter, but Byrne discovered that it took four of his men ten hours to assemble the display model. Even more discouraging was the public’s reluctance to buy. Byrne put his shelter on display in shopping centers, parking lots, and veterans’ halls.Thousands of people walked through, but nobody bought. Next, Byrne attempted to drum up business by sending a corps of salesmen into the suburbs to sell shelters door-to-door.2 Byrne’s salesmen reported that people would take the literature, ask questions, and finally explain that they couldn’t afford a shelter, or that they were going to see how things turned out in Berlin. Dealers to whom Byrne sold shelters fared no better. James Cline, manager of a lumber company in Royal Oak, reported that some 2,500 people visited his display shelter in a period of eight weeks. But Cline sold only one shelter, and was castigated by his fellow citizens:“People were confused, frightened, angry. I was accused of profiteering , war-mongering—you name it.”3 Despite the discussions of nuclear war that pervaded society, surveys consistently reported that very few Americans—about .4 percent according to one study—were taking steps to build shelters.4 In 1962 Peter I.Rose and his students at Smith College surveyed the citizens of Northampton,Massachusetts , on the threat posed by nuclear war and what those citizens were prepared to do about it. The study found a curious demographic pattern: Democrats, veterans, and Catholics or highly religious persons were the groups most likely to build or consider building a shelter, as were parents of school-age children, people with high school educations or less, and those with incomes under $5,000. “Considering” building a shelter and actually building one are two very different things,however,and only one person interviewed had actually constructed a fallout shelter. By far, the largest proportion of those surveyed indicated confusion (37 percent) or indecision (24 percent) about the shelter issue.5 Another 1962 study that compared eighty shelter owners with eighty non–shelter owners indicated that the two groups held fundamentally different worldviews. Non–shelter owners were generally more optimistic about the prospects for world peace, while shelter owners expressed a corresponding pessimism. Paradoxically, shelter owners believed that shelters reduced the chance of war, but were more convinced than non–shelter owners that war would occur.6 The Shelters That Were Not Built, the Nuclear War That Did Not Start 187 The reluctance of Americans to purchase shelters was certainly not related to a lack of awareness of the issues.A U.S. News national survey conducted in 1961 at the height of Cold War tensions found that “everybody in this country, it seems, is thinking or talking about what to do in case war starts and nuclear bombs fall on the U.S.”Yet paradoxically, U.S. News found “no mass movement toward preparedness.” Instead, surveyors described the prevailing attitude as...