I was waiting to go to one of my classes today at Northwest Missouri State University... when I noticed this display case in the hallway right outside the class. It's been there all year... I just never looked inside it... what I found could not be any cooler... just check out these pictures I took (compiled into a collage).

------>http://img227.imageshack.us/img227/6743/realfalloutkt5.png<------

sorry for the picture quality, they were taken with my phone. I really wasn't expecting to see this stuff. Apparently vaults were nearly a reality... I love how the caption on the LIFE magazine says "New facts you must know about Fallout"...

There's also a picture of some survival comic book.

Those machines are Geiger counters.

Just thought this stuff was cool and thought I'd share it with everyone.

It's actualy not surprising, seeing as this game was based on the 50's mass paranoia over nuclear holocost, I'm not surprised scientists threw around the idea back then

here's some more stuff I found after searching for a minute

http://wardomatic.blogspot.com/2006/11/fallout-shelter-handbook-1962.html


and http://www.thismodernworld.com/pages/gra/gra_life.html are some scans I found from the 1/12/1962 issue of LIFE magazine (the one I took pictures of)

apparently during the Cold War, they had http://sporkinthedrawer.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/bert_the_turtle_1.jpg instead of the Vault Boy. I don't know which I prefer... http://collectingtokens.files.wordpress.com/2007/11/bert2.png is pretty funny.

They still taught all the duck and cover crap and we had drills and watched the old CD reels when I started school in the seventies. Kind of funny to see it encased and wowed over, when I was a kid it was a distant idea of a threat, but I was very much aware that my entire world could vanish in a flash.

Take a walk around your town sometime and look for the CD insignia, theres probably still designated shelters.

oh yeah, pretty much every building on campus is a Fallout shelter.. there's those old metal fallout signs everywhere.

I wish I had a fallout shelter.

start digging

Its called Canada....

I keed! I keed!

but seriously that's where I'd go if the you know hits the what nots.

On topic: Great find on the scans, that would be some nice collectible stuff if one could get their hands on one.

a lot

I don't wish I had a Fallout shelter in addition to my house, I wish I had a Fallout shelter instead of my house.

I found the magazine on ebay http://cgi.ebay.com/January-12-1962-LIFE-Magazine-Advertising-FREE-SHIP_W0QQitemZ270301899934QQihZ017QQcategoryZ280QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem, if anyone's interested... I'm broke right now, otherwise I'd buy it.

Great pictures, thanks for those.
Do history on the cold war, you will be surprised just how close fallout almost became a reality.

I knew about the people freaking out about a nuclear war, but it just surprised me that right outside a class I've had all semester was this Fallout related stuff... and I never noticed. This all seems really cool to me. ... I mean, this wasn't that long ago.

Guess you to young to have experienced duck and cover drills too.... :nuke:

Yeah I'm not feelin it.. Chernobyl and Stalker creeped me out, especially after viewing actual pictures from the place..

yeah, I guess I am. We had shelter in place drills where we had to pretend some student was shooting up the school. The police would come and escort us out of the building and we'd wait in the tennis courts... that was awesome since we had to turn off the lights and lock the door and hide in the rooms, and the police would secure each room separately... this took a good hour. (our high school had around 2000 students.)... free hour off...

yeah... it would really svck... but it's still interesting

I've got a lot of stuff like that at home in my spare room.

My Dad worked for AT&T during the cold war era. The building he worked in had a massive door and the interior was designed to hold a large quantity of people. It was large enough that they had their own hospital.

That fascinated me as a kid, so whenever he had a brochure or a book about radiation or fallout - I kept it. I probably have a dosimeter somewhere. I don' t have a Geiger counter though.

Maybe I should take pictures of it and put it online somewhere.

If you're curious, Duck and Cover and a bunch of other government films of the era are available for viewing at the Prelinger Archives on Archive.org.

http://www.archive.org/details/prelinger

There are a couple of models of NBC gas masks that whoever designed power armor was obviously looking at when he drew the helmet, but I can't remember which ones now. If you browse e-bay for gas masks eventually you'll see what I'm talking about.

There's lots of neat stuff around if you like the era. This is another cool site I used to haunt...

http://www.civildefensemuseum.com/

Cheers.

I talked to my dad about Bert the turtle, he remembers this stuff pretty well from grade school. The videos are hilarious if you can find them on youtube.

thanks, this is really interesting stuff... I'm glad I'm not the only one who finds the real history of this stuff interesting. My parents don't have anything like that I'm sure (they were born in '66). But maybe my aunt....I should ask her on Thanksgiving. I'll also ask my grandparents about it... I'll bet my dad's parents have something like that, they're crazy and save everything.

I've been looking at this stuff for the past couple hours.... and it's starting to get me down. I used to think this stuff was interesting and cool... now I think it's interesting and sad. I've watched a bunch of videos and read a bunch of articles and the whole thing is really depressing. Sigh... I'm going to bed.

Big Lots has a 3-disc DVD titled "Coldwar Paranoia" -- several dozen infamous training films,etc.
Only $6

hmm, I may have to look for that when I go home for Thanksgiving

Hey, I have two of those Geiger counters in my display case!
http://paulgiachetti.com/dis3.jpg