WHAT ABOUT AN A-BOMB SHELTER?

Today’s library blast from the past is How to Build Your Own Garage, published by Popular Mechanics in 1953. While it is very detailed, informative, and well-written, I didn’t think that it was terribly exciting until I reached chapter seven, WHAT ABOUT AN A-BOMB SHELTER?

So without further ado, please enjoy these helpful hints for constructing your very own bomb shelter and surviving an atomic blast.

Always wear your fedora while operating power tools.

That could be my poor car, out in the snow.

Save the male children! They will rebuild our society!

The man stocking the shelves is smoking a pipe. Awesome.

Step E – If you’re about to be nuked, be sure to close the blinds.

And finally, a helpful diagram.

Since I did most of my growing up during the latter years of the Cold War, I have vivid memories of elementary school civil defense drills – which mainly involved crouching under our desks in confusion until the teachers gave us the all clear. So when I was in third or fourth grade, and thus able to fully understand the impending nuclear doom, I decided that if those sirens ever went off I was going to go outside and watch. No bomb shelters for me, please.

Ah, those were the days.

– Amy