Fallout shelters are often featured on the reality show Doomsday Preppers. [39] During the Cold War, many countries built fallout shelters for senior government officials and key military installations, such as the Greek Island Project and the Cheyenne Mountain nuclear bunker in the United States and the emergency headquarters of the Government of Canada. However, plans were made to use existing buildings with sturdy underground basements as temporary fallout shelters. These buildings were decorated with the orange, yellow and black shield designed in 1961 by the Director of Administrative Logistics of the United States Army Corps of Engineers, Robert W. Blakeley. [1] In the 1981 episode “The Russians are Coming” of Only Fools and Horses, Derek Trotter buys a prominent fallout shelter and then decides to build it for fear of an impending nuclear war caused by the Soviet Union. Gamma radiation penetrates farther through matter than alpha or beta radiation. Most of the design of a typical fallout shelter is designed to protect against gamma rays. Gamma rays are best absorbed by materials of high atomic numbers and high density, although no effect is significant relative to the total mass per area on the path of gamma radiation. Thus, lead as a gamma shield is only slightly better than an equal mass of another shielding material such as aluminum, concrete, water or earth.
In Switzerland, most residential dwellings are no longer supplied with food and water for extended settlement and many have been converted by owners for other purposes (e.g. wine cellars, skis, gyms). [18] However, the owner is still obliged to take care of the maintenance of the shelter. [16] In the United States in September 1961, under the leadership of Steuart L. Pittman, the federal government launched the Community Fallout Shelter Program. [3] [4] A letter from President Kennedy advising the use of fallout shelters appeared in the September 1961 issue of Life magazine. [5] In the period from 1961 to 1963, there was a growth in sales of Fallout shelters, but eventually there was a public backlash against the Fallout shelter as a consumer product. [6] Commercially manufactured Geiger counters are expensive and require frequent calibration. It is possible to build an electrometer called a Kearn Fallout counter, which does not require batteries or professional calibration, from properly sized plans with just a can of coffee or bucket, a plaster board, a monofilament fishing line and aluminum foil. [29] Plans are available for free in Cresson Kearny`s Nuclear War Survival Skills reference. [30] The 1961 Twilight Zone episode “The Shelter,” based on a script by Rod Serling, deals with the consequences of actually using an animal shelter. Another episode of the series titled “One More Pallbearer” featured a Fallout shelter owned by a millionaire.
The 1985 adaptation of the series had the episode “Shelter Skelter”, which featured a Fallout shelter. Both ends of the trench have ramps or entrances perpendicular to the trench, so gamma rays cannot penetrate (they can only move in a straight line). To make the overburden waterproof (in case of rain), plastic wrap can be buried a few centimeters below the surface and held with stones or bricks. [21] Paranoia, a role-playing game, takes place in a city-sized Fallout shelter run by a crazy computer. In the vast majority of accidents and in all atomic bomb explosions, the threat of beta and gamma emitters is greater than that of alpha emitters in the fallout.