Caldwell Elementary School in McKinney, Texas, northeast of Dallas, looks like a typical 1940s-era brick school building. But it served a critical role in mid-century America: If a nuclear attack occurred, the people of McKinney could seek refuge from radioactive fallout in its basement.
The faded “fallout shelter” sign with three yellow triangles above the door is one of tens of thousands still visible on building façades today. They serve as a grim reminder of the hottest flashes of the Cold War. So why are they still around?
- “Follow the Arrows”
“Follow the Arrows”
As Washington and Moscow pushed the world to the nuclear brink in the early 1960s, fallout shelter signs became a common part of the American landscape. On July 25, 1961, President John F. Kennedy said in a televised address that the United States had a moral obligation to protect its people from nuclear threat. “To recognize the possibilities of nuclear war in the missile age, without our citizens knowing what they should do and where they should go if bombs begin to fall, would be a failure of responsibility,” he said, before announcing a plan to establish public fallout shelters across the country.
By September that year, representatives of the National Shelter Program were hard at work identifying suitable public spaces in existing buildings and stocking them with essential survival supplies. (The keyword here is public: The U.S. already counted a significant number of shelters, but they were privately owned and inaccessible to most people.) Each shelter that could house 50 or more people was marked with the National Fallout Shelter Sign, unveiled by the Department of Defense’s Office of Civil Defense on December 1, 1961…