Another of the original Retrofuture articles from 1999, this was inspired by Y2K hysteria.
Before you supersize your Y2K kit you might want to consider fallout shelters. Those abandoned underground relics of the Atomic Age are a timely reminder of what happens when talk of doomsday scenarios spooks the public.
“I think, in retrospect, people were throwing their money away,” reflects historian Alan Brinkley on the value of fallout shelters. And Brinkley, a professor of history at Columbia University, ought to know.
His own family built a shelter in the basement of their Chevy Chase, Maryland home complete with a chemical toilet, canned goods and sleeping bags.
“There wasn’t the faintest chance anybody would have been able to survive,” laughs Brinkley. But given the Cold War climate “people who knew better were likely to make some concessions to the hysteria.”
Although his family’s effort was “half-hearted,” Brinkley (whose father David is the well-known broadcaster) recalls the dire atmosphere. “Most people believed that it was right to do something to prepare for nuclear war,” he recalls.
In contrast to the government’s bland reassurances regarding the Y2K problem, John F. Kennedy urged citizens to seriously consider building a fallout shelter in case of nuclear war.
Brinkley notes the difference between the two eras. “In the 1950s, everybody was scared of nuclear war,” he explains, “but beyond that people had a basic faith in government and in technology.”
Not so today, says Brinkley: “There is so much less faith, not just in government but, in this case, in technology, than the 1950s. Today people are much less inclined to believe assurances that the problem is under control.”
When fears of an atomic holocaust mushroomed during the Cold War, many citizens felt they had no choice but to prepare for the worst case scenario. Although the two superpowers never fired their weapons, even if they had, experts agreed, a fallout shelter would have done little to prolong long-term survival of its occupants.
Still, millions of dollars were spent on the estimated 200,000 shelters that were built and then abandoned after war fears subsided. Many millions more were spent by the U.S. government on Civil Defense fallout shelters.
Although the anxiety level is similar in regard to Y2K, it appears that most people are not digging holes in their backyards. But, as Brinkley notes, “there’s a tremendous receptivity to conspiracy theories and the idea of great catastrophes lurking around the corner.”
A telling gauge of the current state of panic is the rise of Y2K-related scams. Consumer Reports recently issued a warning to readers to be on the look-out for opportunists trying to cash in on the escalating fears. “While anticipating inconveniences is appropriate, “panicky stockpiling of essentials is not,” writes the magazine.
Perhaps, in the future, people will write about the history of Y2K as they do about the Cold War—a time of panic, unreason, anxiety, and, ultimately, calm and relief. Compared to the threat of an all-out nuclear war, the disruption of a few computer systems may seem relatively benign.
But then doomsday is always nigh. “There’s enough publicity about the problem,” Brinkley says, “that many people are instinctively inclined to believe the worst.
