This thread is pure awesomesauce :tops:

When I was younger... around 11 or 12. I was walking back from school to my home and the air raids sirens went off down a main road.

I just stood frozen looking up to see if I could see my bringer of death... got a bit scared and my father had only recently destroyed the air raid shelter in our back garden.

I still don't know why the sirens went off. My school less than half a mile to a police station, a hospital and a military base so I guess that's why there were air raid sirens. I was told as a kid to look out for IRA terrorists due to my location, how do I do that exactly?

I've always enjoyed reading about the American homes with their own personal ant-nuclear bunkers... a scary time I imagine but cool when looking back in time at it.


edit: The comments on the link provided to the Fallout shelter guide is hilarious... I really would like that guide.

i just bought it...........

And after the bombs fall, you can go there to the new 51st State of America. Besides, the USA will need Canada as its own sovereign passage way to the conflict in Alaska ( I am not talking about hypothetical situations, I am referring to Palin going back to governing Alaska)

Nice! Here's some more:
http://www.conelrad.com/index.php

On a related note, Google just archived about 2 million Life Magazine photos online, and you can do a search specific to their photos.

http://images.google.com/hosted/life

do a search for "http://images.google.com/images?q=fallout+shelter&q=source%3Alife" - great pictures!

this is amazing. We're compiling a huge Cold War era museum right in the forum... keep up the good work..

I'll archive myself here then shall I? I used to fly a RAF Vulcan bomber in the 1950's with my eyepatch (Incase I looked at the flashes, I'd only go blind in the one eye) and my hopelesly optimistic return instructions "Land anywhere that you can - It might not be an airport".

Fun days!

The Fallout games were based entirely in reality (Or at least the reality that we thought the future would hold back in the 50's). The only thing that is unreal is that anything would survive M.A.D (Mutual assured destruction) to populate the world afterwards. You have to understand the scale of the nuclear arsnals held (And STILL held) by both sides was and is massively overpowered for the stated intention. The promise of M.A.D. was (and is) the total destruction of all life on this planet. No fish, no ants, no roaches, no nothing. If there was a chance that anything would survive, there is a chance that somebody would risk having a nuclear war if they percieved they could win. By guaranteeing that nobody could survive was the guarantee that nobody would launch an attack.

In effect, by having such large arsenals, it cancels out their use.

The real danger is in disarmament. Once the numbers of weapons fall below that required to ensure M.A.D, there is a higher chance of them being used.

This is also why it is very dangerous for countries to have nukes that don't have the capacity to ensure M.A.D. (Israel, India, Pakistan, Iran, North Korea, etc) because there is a potential perception that a war would be winable. That is why NATO has threatened that any use of nuclear weapons by smaller nations would be met with a response from them - which in return would be responded to by Russia - thus ensuring M.A.D.

Its an awfully stupid and expensive way to have peace. But there you have it, man IS stupid. Films like Dr Strangelove and games like Fallout play on this stupidity to great effect.

wow.... who says you can't learn stuff from the internet...

Yes a couple of months ago at friends place up to the north of here, we watched a dvd full of this fifty and sixties american propaganda [censored], quit hilarious and funny they were, not only bert the turtle, but also propaganda clips about how to life in a vault in cause of a nuke attack (it just could come from vault tech), more funny was that the first in series always feat. a nice happy suburb (just like tranquility street), with all 'white' tidy people, the later video's from the sixties and seventies even featured a 'black tidy' man in the clips ...

I think it's kinda weird how in the 50's and 60's they downplayed the nuclear bombs. I mean, sure, they said it could happen any time and you should watch out, but all the videos were funny and lighthearted. Now think back to the terrorist attacks on 9-11, and the threat levels that followed. They did not sugar coat that stuff. There were no cheesy / funny videos coming out about that. The government was constantly saying there could be another terrorist attack any second... there was no 'Bert'... there was a chart showing how likely we were to die that day...

Here's the original http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixy5FBLnh7o informational video.

You might notice stylisticlly it has a lot in common with the Fallout informational videos... of course, the practical USE of the information is arguable at best, a nuke of 20 megatons can cause blindness and burns at up to 40km from the epicenter and would account for the majority of the casulaties - well outside the radius that the shockwave could be felt (Where ducking and covering might save your ass). The scarey part of a nuclear detonation is the fact those burns are not caused by any kind of fireball; but by photons/infrared, yes photons, regular light. The intensity is greater than the sun to the point you'll literally get 3rd degree sunburn, and of course, and since light travels at the speed of light if you're in direct line-of-sight with the fireball by the time you see it, you'll have already been injured.

Edit The greatest irony of all about duck and cover and the fear of nuclear war in the 1950's, was that at the time they hadn't even discovered fallout - they were panickign about the scale of the bomb blast, they didn't realise it'd turn the landscape into a radioactive wasteland that'd be unsafe for long term habitation for thousands of years.

Just wanted to mention the documentary "Atomic Cafe", you can find it on google video (pick the one with 85mins).

Quite interesting to see some things back then and hear what people thought about the bombs.

Pretty interesting stuff in here.

The place where I work has a "Hidden" backup place to do what we do incase of attack. It is a very old Nuke shelter from the 50s that has of course been updated. Only way you can tell it is there is an antenna sticking out of the ground on the surface.
There is a ramp with a wheelchair lift going down into it then a huge blast door at the bottom. Looks nothing like the fallout3 blast doors but the inside of the "Vault" looks very similar.
We call it the cave as it is kind of cold, and moist down there.

I highly recommend The Doomsday Scenario by L. Douglas Keeney. It's a commentary on recently declassified government documents of what a Soviet nuclear attack on America would have been like. It covers population, economic, and transportation issues as well as what the liklihood of survival was.

It's readily available at any Borders or on http://www.amazon.com/Doomsday-Scenario-How-America-Ends/dp/076031313X

thanks for that... I might have to pick that up.

that's pretty cool. With all the fallout shelter stuff around campus, I'm sure there's probably something like that around, but I wouldn't know where to look or who to ask.

Those Duck and Cover movies scared the crap out of me in the late 60's when I was in elementary school.

If we weren't watching films on how not to be a "Mr. Bumble" and being polite, and cleaning up your lunch area,
we had to do those "Duck and Cover" drills

wait... are you talking about http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iC8UUNt0fiU&feature=related? I remember finding this video online a couple years ago.... it's amazing. Also, it's the name of a band (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Bungle) that my friend showed me a few years ago. Apparently there's some connection between Faith No More and Mr. Bungle (the band)... like some members were the same or something...

Mike Patton is the key to that equation. A truly fantastic singer.
I really love this thread, it is SO worth the read!

That's what makes Fallout a scary game. The fact that it's mostly pretty possible.

yeah, that's right. I couldn't remember.

and you're right... little did I know that when I posted those couple pictures that I would attract a museum's amount of knowledge. I have learned so much just from random people posting their experiences... this is amazing.

I think it's less possible now with the whole Mutually Assured Destruction think. Back in the day, people didn't know what would happen.... now they do.

Damn that is cool!

Last Monday I visited the Cold War Modern Exhibit at the V&A museum in London

Lots of Cool 50's, 60's and 70's Cold War memorabilia, I even bought myself a replica Handbook that was issued in 1963 about securing your house
from a nuclear blast.....and how to survive the aftermath....apparently Nuclear Fallout only lasts for a few days??