A Brief History of American Fallout Shelters
6 min readMay 2, 2022
Growing up in the 1980s, I watched my dad and grandpa attempt to build a bomb shelter in our Dallas, Texas backyard.
Having just watched “The Day After”, a low budget (but effective) fictional depiction of a nuclear apocalypse in the American heartland, they endeavored to protect the family from the Soviet nuclear threat.
They made it about three feet down before calling it quits — there’s a reason homes in Texas don’t have basements — digging in that Texas clay is like trying to dig through concrete!
