FALLOUT SHELTER MANAGER GUIDE EXCERPTS (1962)

When the United States government began marking and stocking public Fallout Shelters on a large scale in 1962, the Office of Civil Defense began producing training booklets for would-be shelter managers. One of these documents (“not intended for distribution to the public”) was entitled “Guide for Community Fallout Shelter Management” dated June 22, 1962 [U.S. Government Printing Office: 1962 0—64331]. In subsequent years, the government also put out a series of surreal training films on the topic including Public Shelter Living: The Story of Shelter 104 (1964). This post examines the Guide.

The first thing that the modern reader notices about the material is how non-committal it is. The words “For training purposes only” on the cover page is the opening tip-off that the bureaucratic authors are hedging their bets mightily. And who can blame them for the disclaimer? This document is, after all, the government’s version of what life might be like after an atomic attack—you’d want some wiggle, too. No wonder the Department of Defense didn’t want the document shared with the public…

The booklet is a mostly boring recitation of boilerplate civil defense assumptions (we don’t even get into the shelter until chapter three!). For your convenience, this post will share the more interesting text excerpts from the document.

The excerpt presented below is, like a lot of the booklet, is overly optimistic… 

One of the more valuable pieces of advice offered to the potential shelter manager is not to overpromise the estimated time of departure…

One of the first things the document gets to is smoking because the authors no doubt assumed that surviving World War III would cause survivors to want to light up….

 

It is interesting to note that the topic of smoking (above) is given more space in the booklet than instruction on what to do with someone who expires during their shelter stay…

 
And then there is the other, more mundane kind of waste management…

And what is the shelter manager supposed to do if someone breaks the rules? Based on the answer below, it would seem that he should break out the riot gear that is not mentioned anywhere in the booklet (but we know must have existed).

When not handling dead bodies, breaking up insurrections or dealing with waste, the shelter manager was supposed to keep the “shelterees” entertained…

And spiritually fulfilled…

Of course, in the ever-optimistic, but cautious verbiage of the government authors, there would come a time to leave the shelter…

In the back of the book there are handy forms (for instructional purposes only) to help the shelter manager implement order on chaos. First there is the shelter registration form…

And then there is a sample schedule to better regiment the extreme monotony…