Fallout shelter

thumb|A fallout shelter sign in the United States of America, designed in 1961 by [[United States Army Corps of Engineers director of administrative logistics support function Robert W. Blakeley]]

A fallout shelter is an enclosed space specially designated to protect occupants from radioactive debris or fallout resulting from a nuclear explosion. Many such shelters were constructed as civil defense measures during the Cold War.

During a nuclear explosion, matter vaporized in the resulting fireball is exposed to neutrons from the explosion, absorbs them, and becomes radioactive. When this material condenses in the rain, it forms dust and light sandy materials that resemble ground pumice. The fallout emits alpha and beta particles, as well as gamma rays.

Much of this highly radioactive material falls to Earth, exposing anything within its line of sight to radiation and becoming a significant hazard. A fallout shelter is designed to allow its occupants to minimize exposure to harmful fallout until radioactivity has decayed to a safer level, over a few weeks or months.

Principle

thumb|Idealized American fallout shelter, around 1957.

A fallout shelter is designed to protect its occupants from:

the mechanical and thermal effects of a nuclear explosion (or nuclear accident);
radioactive fallout, allowing them to survive for a period of time deemed sufficient to allow them to escape safely.

History

North America

thumb|Fallout shelter water storage can: a barrel issued by the U.S. Department of Defense, Office of Civil Defense. 1963 During the Cold War, many countries built fallout shelters for high-ranking government officials and crucial military facilities, such as Project Greek Island and the Cheyenne Mountain nuclear bunker in the United States and Canada's Emergency Government Headquarters. Plans were made, however, to use existing buildings with sturdy basements below ground level as makeshift fallout shelters. These buildings were placarded with the orange-yellow-and-black trefoil sign designed by the United States Army Corps of Engineers director of the administrative logistics support function, Robert W. Blakeley, in 1961.

The National Emergency Alarm Repeater (NEAR) program was developed in the United States in 1956 during the Cold War to supplement the existing siren warning systems and radio broadcasts in the event of a nuclear attack. The NEAR civilian alarm device was engineered and tested, but the program was not viable and was terminated in 1967.

In the U.S. in September 1961, under the direction of Steuart L. Pittman, the federal government started the Community Fallout Shelter Program. A letter from President Kennedy advising the use of fallout shelters appeared in the September 1961 issue of Life magazine. From 1954 to 1961, home fallout shelter sales grew, but eventually there was a public backlash against the fallout shelter as a consumer product and the market collapsed by 1963.

In November 1961, in Fortune magazine, an article by Gilbert Burck appeared that outlined the plans of Nelson Rockefeller, Edward Teller, Herman Kahn, and Chet Holifield for an enormous network of concrete-lined underground fallout shelters throughout the United States sufficient to shelter millions of people to serve as a refuge in case of nuclear war.The United States ended federal funding for the shelters in the 1970s. In 2017, New York City began removing the yellow signs since members of the public are unlikely to find edible food and usable medicine inside those rooms. In 2026, personal fallout shelters experienced an uptick in popularity.

Atomitat

The Atomitat was an underground house in Plainview, Texas, designed by Jay Swayze and completed in 1962. The house was designed in response to the fear of nuclear war during the Cold War. The house was designed to be an "atomic-habitat" which met the United States Civil Defense specifications. It was the first bunker-house to meet their specifications as a nuclear shelter. Swayze also built an underground house for the 1964 New York World's Fair: it was called the Underground World Home.

Europe

Similar projects have been undertaken in Finland, which requires all buildings with area over 600 m2 to have an NBC (nuclear-biological-chemical) shelter, and Norway, which requires all buildings with an area over 1000 m2 to have a shelter.

The former Soviet Union and other Eastern Bloc countries often designed their underground mass-transit and subway tunnels to serve as bomb and fallout shelters in the event of an attack. Currently, the deepest subway line in the world is situated in St Petersburg in Russia, with an average depth of 60 meters, while the second deepest subway station is Arsenalna in Kyiv, at 105.5 meters.

Germany has protected shelters for 3% of its population, Austria for 30%, Finland for 70%, Sweden for 81%, and Switzerland for 114%. was a Cold War-era nuclear bunker and military command centre located near the town of Konjic in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Built to protect Yugoslav President Josip Broz Tito and up to 350 members of his inner circle

The facility is now under the authority of the Bosnian Ministry of Defense. It is managed by the country's military, guarded by a five-soldier detachment,

Switzerland

thumb|The [[Sonnenberg Tunnel, in Switzerland, was the world's largest civilian nuclear fallout shelter, designed to protect 20,000 civilians in the eventuality of war or disaster (civil defense function abandoned in 2006). Later, the law ensured that all residential buildings built after 1978 contained a nuclear shelter able to withstand a blast from a 12-megaton explosion at a distance of 700 metres. The Federal Law on the Protection of the Population and Civil Protection still requires that every inhabitant should have a place in a shelter close to where they live.

The Swiss authorities maintained large communal shelters (such as the Sonnenberg Tunnel until 2006) stocked with enough food and fuel to last over four months. As of 2006, there were about 300,000 shelters built in private residences, institutions and hospitals, as well as 5,100 public shelters for a total of 8.6 million places, a level of coverage equal to 114% of the population. Other shelters were built for the purposes of the ROTOR radar system and the regional seat of government scheme. The Pindar complex in London is intended to provide its inhabitants with fallout protection in the event of nuclear attack, as was the earlier Central Government War Headquarters in Corsham.

Details of shelter construction

thumb|Door of a public fallout shelter in Switzerland (2014).

thumb|Large fire door, sealing a fallout and air raid shelter inside the basement parking garage of a hotel in Germany.

Shielding

A basic fallout shelter consists of shielding that reduces gamma-ray exposure by a factor of 1000. The required shielding can be accomplished with 10 times the thickness of any quantity of material capable of cutting gamma ray exposure in half. Shields that reduce gamma ray intensity by 50% (1/2) include of lead, of concrete, of packed earth or of air. When multiple thicknesses are built, the shielding multiplies. Thus, a practical fallout shield is ten halving-thicknesses of packed earth, reducing gamma rays by approximately 1024 times (210).

Usually, an expedient, purpose-built fallout shelter is a trench with a strong roof buried 1 m (3 ft) of earth. The two ends of the trench have ramps or entrances at right angles to the trench, so that gamma rays cannot enter (they can travel only in straight lines). To make the overburden waterproof (in case of rain), a plastic sheet may be buried a few inches below the surface and held down with rocks or bricks.

Blast doors are designed to absorb the shock wave of a nuclear blast, bending and then returning to their original shape.

Climate control

Dry earth is a reasonably good thermal insulator, but over several weeks of habitation, a shelter will become dangerously hot. Some shelters, however, incorporate NBC-filters for additional protection.

Locations

Effective public shelters can be the middle floors of some tall buildings or parking structures, or below ground level in most buildings with more than 10 floors. The thickness of the upper floors must form an effective shield, and the windows of the sheltered area must not view fallout-covered ground that is closer than 1.5 km (1 mi). One of Switzerland's solutions is to use road tunnels through the mountains, with some of these tunnels capable of protecting tens of thousands.

Fallout shelters are not always underground. Above-ground buildings with walls and roofs dense enough to provide a meaningful protection factor can be used as fallout shelters.

A battery-powered radio may help receive reports on fallout patterns and clearance. However, radio and other electronic equipment may be disabled by electromagnetic pulse. For example, even at the height of the Cold War, EMP protection had been completed for only 125 of the approximately 2,771 radio stations in the United States Emergency Broadcast System. Also, only 110 of 3,000 existing Emergency Operating Centers had been protected against EMP effects. The Emergency Broadcast System has since been supplanted in the United States by the Emergency Alert System.

The reference Nuclear War Survival Skills includes the following supplies in a list of "Minimum Pre-Crisis Preparations": one or more shovels, a pick, a bow-saw with an extra blade, a hammer, and polyethylene film (also any necessary nails, wire, etc.); a homemade shelter-ventilating pump (a KAP); large containers for water; a plastic bottle of sodium hypochlorite bleach; one or two KFMs (Kearny fallout meters) and the knowledge to operate them; at least a 2-week supply of compact, nonperishable food; an efficient portable stove; wooden matches in a waterproof container; essential containers and utensils for storing, transporting, and cooking food; a hose-vented can, with heavy plastic bags for liners, for use as a toilet; tampons; insect screen and fly bait; any special medications needed by family members; pure potassium iodide, a bottle, and a medicine dropper; a first-aid kit and a tube of antibiotic ointment; long-burning candles (with small wicks) sufficient for at least 14 nights; an oil lamp; a flashlight and extra batteries; and a transistor radio with extra batteries and a metal box to protect it from electromagnetic pulse.

Inhabitants should have water on hand, per person per day. Water stored in bulk containers requires less space than water stored in smaller bottles.

Kearny fallout meter

Commercially made Geiger counters are expensive and require frequent calibration. It is possible to construct an electrometer-type radiation meter called the Kearny fallout meter, which does not require batteries or professional calibration, from properly-scaled plans with just a coffee can or pail, gypsum board, monofilament fishing line, and aluminum foil. Plans are freely available in the public domain in the reference Nuclear War Survival Skills by Cresson Kearny.

Use

thumb|"About Fallout" (1955) - Official U.S. Civil Defense information film reel.

Inhabitants should plan to remain sheltered for at least two weeks (with an hour outside at the end of the first week – see Swiss Civil Defense guidelines), then work outside for gradually increasing amounts of time, reaching four hours a day by three weeks. The normal work is to sweep or wash fallout into shallow trenches to decontaminate the area. They should sleep in a shelter for several months. Official authorities recommend evacuation at three weeks.

If available, inhabitants may take potassium iodide at the rate of 130 mg/day per adult (65 mg/day per child) as an additional measure to protect the thyroid gland from the uptake of dangerous radioactive iodine, a component of most fallout and reactor waste.

{| style="float:right; clear:right; margin-left:1.2em;"

|thumb|Relative abilities of three different types of [[ionizing radiation to penetrate solid matter.]]

|thumb|The protection factor provided by 10 cm of concrete shielding where the source is the idealised Chernobyl fallout.

|[[File:Protectionfactorchernobyl20cm.png|thumb|The protection factor provided by 20 cm of concrete shielding where the source is the idealised Chernobyl fallout.

Beta (β)

Beta radiation consists of particles (high-speed electrons) given off by some fallout. Most beta particles cannot penetrate more than about of air or about of water, wood, or human body tissue; or a sheet of aluminum foil. Avoiding direct exposure to fallout particles will prevent most injuries from beta radiation.

Gamma (γ)

Gamma radiation penetrates further through matter than alpha or beta radiation. Most of the design of a typical fallout shelter is intended to protect against gamma rays. Materials with high atomic numbers and high density absorb gamma rays more effectively. However, neither effect is important compared to the total mass per area in the path of the gamma ray. Thus, lead is only modestly better as a gamma shield than an equal mass of another shielding material such as aluminum, concrete, water, or soil.

Some gamma radiation from fallout will penetrate even the best shelters. However, the radiation dose received while inside a shelter can be significantly reduced with proper shielding. Ten halving thicknesses of a given material can reduce gamma exposure to less than of unshielded exposure.

Weapons versus nuclear accident fallout

The bulk of the radioactivity in nuclear accident fallout is more long-lived than that in weapons fallout. A good table of the nuclides, such as that provided by the Korean Atomic Energy Research Institute, includes the fission yields of the different nuclides. From this data, it is possible to calculate the isotopic mixture in the fallout (due to fission products in bomb fallout).

Other matters and simple improvements

While a person's home may not be a purpose-built shelter, it could be considered one if measures are taken to improve fallout protection.

Measures to lower the beta dose

The main threat of beta radiation exposure comes from hot particles in contact with or close to the skin of a person. Also, swallowed or inhaled hot particles could cause beta burns. As it is important to avoid bringing hot particles into the shelter, one option is to remove one's outer clothing or follow other decontamination procedures on entry. Fallout particles will cease to be radioactive enough to cause beta burns within a few days following a nuclear explosion. The danger of gamma radiation will persist for far longer than the threat of beta burns in areas with heavy fallout exposure.

Measures to lower the gamma dose rate

The gamma dose rate due to the contamination brought into the shelter on the clothing of a person is likely to be small (by wartime standards) compared to gamma radiation that penetrates through the walls of the shelter.

Fallout shelters in popular culture

thumb|The international distinctive sign of civil defense personnel and infrastructures.

Fallout shelters feature prominently in the Robert A. Heinlein novel Farnham's Freehold (Heinlein built a fairly extensive shelter near his home in Colorado Springs in 1963), Pulling Through by Dean Ing, A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller and Earth by David Brin.

The 1961 Twilight Zone episode "The Shelter", from a Rod Serling script, deals with the consequences of actually using a shelter. Another episode of the series called "One More Pallbearer" featured a fallout shelter owned by a millionaire. The 1985 adaptation of the series included the episode "Shelter Skelter," which featured a fallout shelter.

In 1973, British rock band The Who called their tour Fallout Shelter.

In the Only Fools and Horses episode "The Russians are Coming", aired in 1981, Derek Trotter buys a lead fallout shelter, then decides to construct it in fear of an impending nuclear war caused by the Soviet Union.

In 1999, the film Blast from the Past was released. It is a romantic comedy film about a nuclear physicist, his wife, and son who enter a well-equipped, spacious fallout shelter during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. They do not emerge until 35 years later, in 1997. The film shows their reaction to contemporary society.

The Fallout series of computer games depicts the remains of human civilization after an immensely destructive global nuclear war; the United States of America had built underground fallout shelters known as vaults, that were advertised to protect the population against a nuclear attack, but almost all of them were in fact meant to lure subjects for long-term human experimentation.

Paranoia, a role-playing game, takes place in a city-sized fallout shelter, which an insane computer has ruled.

An episode of the sitcom Malcolm in the Middle features a subplot in which Reese and Dewey discover a previously unknown fallout shelter in their backyard and trap their father, Hal, in it, who soon becomes smitten with the shelter's 1960s decor.

The Metro 2033 book series by Russian author Dmitry Glukhovsky depicts the lives of survivors in the subway systems beneath Moscow and Saint Petersburg after a nuclear exchange between the Russian Federation and the United States of America.

Fallout shelters are often featured on the reality television show Doomsday Preppers.

The Silo series of novellas by Hugh Howey feature extensive fallout-style shelters that protect the inhabitants from an initially unknown disaster.

The 2019 US film The Tomorrow Man centers around a reclusive man whose main preoccupation is tending to his in-home fallout shelter and the conspiracy theories that could put it to use.

Notes and references

External links

Nuclear War Survival Skills