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Fallout Shelters: Probably Useless (Let’s Never Find Out) · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of five
0:03
Speaker 1: Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
0:12
Speaker 1: I'm Josh Bluie Clark. There's Charles W. Bam Bam Bryant
0:20
Speaker 1: and Jerry Radioactive Rolling. Oh boy, and this is stuff
0:24
Speaker 1: you should know. You still got it after all these years,
0:30
Speaker 1: you still got it. Yep. Hey, I think before we
0:33
Speaker 1: get going, we should talk very briefly about our audiobook.
0:37
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, because this week, in real time, we are
0:41
Speaker 1: each recording our respective parts for the audio book. And
0:45
Speaker 1: first of all, we just want to tell everyone there's
0:46
Speaker 1: going to be an audiobook version. Yeah, spoiler of Stuff
0:51
Speaker 1: you should know, colon and mostly incomplete guide two very
0:55
Speaker 1: interesting things man still an income compendium of mostly interesting things.
1:03
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, so we're we're trying to push that out
1:05
Speaker 1: as uh, you know, get both, is what I say.
1:09
Speaker 1: But if you're into audio books, we're doing one. But
1:11
Speaker 1: also I just want to make sure people know what
1:13
Speaker 1: they're getting. And I put this on the Stuff you
1:16
Speaker 1: Should Know Army page. They're not getting twenty seven new
1:19
Speaker 1: podcast episodes, no, and they should know that because our
1:24
Speaker 1: podcast is unscripted conversation. An audiobook is us reading an
1:29
Speaker 1: audiobook and rather than just weirdly trading lines reading from
1:34
Speaker 1: a script, which would I think that would dash a
1:37
Speaker 1: lot of people's image of of what we do. We
1:41
Speaker 1: are each reading chapters and I think they're gonna mix
1:43
Speaker 1: in some stuff here and there. But um, yeah, I
1:47
Speaker 1: mean it's gonna be great and fun. But it's not
1:50
Speaker 1: podcast episodes. We don't get to just fart around and
1:52
Speaker 1: make jokes like we gotta read our books we have.
1:55
Speaker 1: Oh man, we will be kept in line. If we
1:58
Speaker 1: try to fart around and make jokes, it would not
1:59
Speaker 1: be good. There's this whole time as money etho, yelling,
2:04
Speaker 1: sometimes crying. It's a real stressful situation. Everybody, How did
2:07
Speaker 1: you had that go for yesterday? Did you enjoy yourself?
2:09
Speaker 1: I just told you there's a lot of yelling and crying.
2:12
Speaker 1: It was very stressful. Yeah, it was fun. It was.
2:14
Speaker 1: It reminded me a lot of recording um The End
2:16
Speaker 1: of the World, because you know, I wrote those and
2:18
Speaker 1: then I read them, So it was very similar to that,
2:21
Speaker 1: except um a lot less heavy. Yeah. I was slightly
2:25
Speaker 1: nervous at first for some reason after talking for twelve years,
2:28
Speaker 1: probably just because you weren't there, But then it was like, uh,
2:32
Speaker 1: you know it was it was fine. Did Fleet the
2:35
Speaker 1: director calm you make you feel better? Yeah? I mean,
2:37
Speaker 1: you know, I got I got in my group. I
2:39
Speaker 1: felt pretty pretty comfy by the end of it. Yeah, So,
2:42
Speaker 1: I mean it has it is fun. It's definitely a
2:44
Speaker 1: lot of extra work this week, but it's kind of cool.
2:47
Speaker 1: You know, at the end, we're gonna have a bona
2:49
Speaker 1: fide audio book. That's right in, a bonafide book that
2:52
Speaker 1: you can pre order now. And uh, we're also working
2:54
Speaker 1: on getting that pre order gift available to the UK
2:59
Speaker 1: and Australia and other parts of the world because we
3:01
Speaker 1: have different publishers there. It's not like we were trying
3:03
Speaker 1: to exclude everyone, no, no, but we are moving heaven
3:07
Speaker 1: Earth to get it done. And yeah, if you're in
3:09
Speaker 1: the US and Canada and your pre order, if you
3:11
Speaker 1: haven't gotten your poster yet, worry not. You're going to
3:14
Speaker 1: get your pre order gift eventually. That's right. Wow. So
3:18
Speaker 1: um for the fifteen seventeen people who stuck around prepared
3:22
Speaker 1: to learn about fallout shelters, because that's ultimately what we're
3:26
Speaker 1: here to talk about today, that's right. Actually, before that,
3:30
Speaker 1: I have to say one more thing, O, God, I
3:33
Speaker 1: posted that squirrel attack video on my Instagram, you know
3:36
Speaker 1: that we talked about on the episode because people kept
3:39
Speaker 1: asking and so I put it up. I'm at Chuck
3:42
Speaker 1: the podcaster. If you want to see a squirrel go
3:44
Speaker 1: berserk and literally fly through the air and hit me
3:48
Speaker 1: in the leg, then you can. You can see that.
3:51
Speaker 1: And it's been like fifteen thousand times. Now, one of
3:54
Speaker 1: these days, I hope you'll infest up to what you
3:57
Speaker 1: did to provoke that squirrel. I mean, the whole thing
3:59
Speaker 1: is there. You see me exit my house, so yeah,
4:02
Speaker 1: but I mean we didn't know like what happened half
4:04
Speaker 1: hour before. You know, that had been ongoing for the
4:07
Speaker 1: last week. That's so now I think we're going to
4:13
Speaker 1: talk about fallout shelters because Chuck Um, your house has
4:18
Speaker 1: a basement, but it's exposed on one side to the outdoors.
4:22
Speaker 1: It's not an in ground basement as far as I know,
4:24
Speaker 1: and hopefully I'm not divulging too much information about your house,
4:27
Speaker 1: so so weird fans will be able to find it
4:29
Speaker 1: and show up. Well, actually, you know, one side of
4:33
Speaker 1: it is exposed to the world, but the other side
4:37
Speaker 1: is you know, ten feet of earth and red clay,
4:40
Speaker 1: like it could have been a great fallout shelter had
4:43
Speaker 1: it not been for that one side. Sure, but there
4:46
Speaker 1: are things you could do or could have done. I
4:49
Speaker 1: think we should use past tents here, because the need
4:52
Speaker 1: for a fallout shelter, as far as the nuclear war
4:54
Speaker 1: goes vanishingly remote these days. I like to think, I
4:59
Speaker 1: don't think should getting any fear mongering. Um, but there
5:03
Speaker 1: are a few things you could have done or could
5:05
Speaker 1: do to build the follow up shelter with that. That
5:09
Speaker 1: that good side, I guess, and we're going to talk
5:12
Speaker 1: about that today. But mainly what we're talking about the
5:14
Speaker 1: followup shelters is almost kind of like this examination of
5:19
Speaker 1: the world psyche during the Cold War, to where as
5:24
Speaker 1: the nuclear arsenals of the Soviet Union in the United
5:27
Speaker 1: States started to build up in step with one another,
5:30
Speaker 1: and we were suddenly in a nuclear arms race where
5:33
Speaker 1: just ten years before there were no such thing as
5:35
Speaker 1: nuclear weapons, people started to realize like, oh man, if
5:39
Speaker 1: one of these goes off near me, I'm in big trouble.
5:43
Speaker 1: And they started looking around to the government to say, hey, um,
5:48
Speaker 1: what should I do? And at first the government was
5:50
Speaker 1: like you know, figure it out yourself. And then eventually
5:55
Speaker 1: the government kind of got a little more involved, and
5:58
Speaker 1: before you know it, we had a national fallout shelter program.
6:03
Speaker 1: As feeble and terrible as it was, at least we
6:06
Speaker 1: had one. Yeah. What's really funny is when you read
6:08
Speaker 1: up on this stuff and you learn that President Kennedy,
6:12
Speaker 1: uh John F. Kennedy, that is, asked Congress for a
6:15
Speaker 1: hundred million dollars to build public fallout shelters. That is
6:19
Speaker 1: such an adorable number. Now that would build like tin
6:22
Speaker 1: fallout shelters these days, maybe like that's maybe that's like
6:26
Speaker 1: the amount of money that would take to get like
6:28
Speaker 1: a motorcade to the cap right from the White House basically,
6:32
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, but it was a real threat back then. Um,
6:36
Speaker 1: and I can't remember what episode it may have been,
6:40
Speaker 1: Uh nuclear radiation. Uh we did one on the disaster
6:44
Speaker 1: in Japan. Yeah, we've done a couple on this. But
6:47
Speaker 1: I know that I told the story of my father
6:51
Speaker 1: like having us sort of do of a fallout shelter
6:55
Speaker 1: when I was ten or twelve years old after the
6:57
Speaker 1: movie the day after aired on television, And yeah, I
7:00
Speaker 1: remember that. Yeah, I mean, you know, it was my
7:02
Speaker 1: brother and I taking out digging out buckets of dirt
7:05
Speaker 1: and carrying them out in the woods and dumping them
7:07
Speaker 1: for probably three or four weekends and then we stopped.
7:11
Speaker 1: So you guys were coverage if something happened, Yeah, I
7:14
Speaker 1: mean we could have. Yeah, it was pretty gross. So
7:17
Speaker 1: was it akin to this, um this this shelter that
7:21
Speaker 1: we were going to go over at the end? Was
7:23
Speaker 1: it like that? Well, I mean it eventually could have been,
7:27
Speaker 1: which is to say, a you know, kind of a
7:29
Speaker 1: concrete room underground surrounded by earth. Oh yeah, no, I'm
7:35
Speaker 1: saying like the kind where it's like you dig a
7:37
Speaker 1: trench and put some woodpoles. This is part of um
7:41
Speaker 1: my basement. Like my dad had a workshop and on
7:44
Speaker 1: the interior wall of the workshop he knocked down the
7:47
Speaker 1: cinder block wall and we just started digging, which I'm
7:50
Speaker 1: safe to the foundation of the house, right, He's like, yeah,
7:54
Speaker 1: it's probably not low bearing. Yeah, exactly. But yeah. There
7:57
Speaker 1: was definitely a point in time, especially during the height
7:59
Speaker 1: of the Cold War, where it was like this is
8:01
Speaker 1: this is We're really in danger here. The world was
8:04
Speaker 1: just kind of walking around just twitching and shaking at
8:07
Speaker 1: the idea of this and part of the problem was
8:10
Speaker 1: not just the idea that um a bomb was going
8:14
Speaker 1: to go off and just blow cities apart, because apparently
8:18
Speaker 1: there was this UM one of the nuclear deterrent theories,
8:22
Speaker 1: the game theories that that people kind of operated under.
8:26
Speaker 1: UM said, no, you know what, if we ever engage
8:29
Speaker 1: in nuclear war, UM, we're just going to be attacking
8:32
Speaker 1: military installations side to side, and so we don't really
8:36
Speaker 1: have to worry about that for people in New York
8:38
Speaker 1: or d C. Or you know, Atlanta, wherever, any of
8:41
Speaker 1: the major metropolitan cities. We have to worry about those
8:43
Speaker 1: cities getting leveled. But there's gonna be a huge problem
8:47
Speaker 1: for the people living there because there's such a thing
8:49
Speaker 1: as radioactive fallout. It's not just the bomb that gets you,
8:53
Speaker 1: it's the fallout afterward. Yeah, I mean, if you're talking
8:56
Speaker 1: about a nuclear bomb, a nuclear warhead, uh to pends
9:00
Speaker 1: on what kind um. You know, back then it was,
9:03
Speaker 1: it was different than it is now. But let's say
9:05
Speaker 1: a one megaton h bomb back in the day would
9:10
Speaker 1: completely wipe out everything within about two miles from where
9:14
Speaker 1: I hit. Yeah, and I know I said, we weren't
9:16
Speaker 1: in a fearmonger Chuck but I found out that there
9:18
Speaker 1: is a bomb in the U s Arsenal called the
9:20
Speaker 1: B A D three which is one point to megatunts
9:23
Speaker 1: and it can be carried around very easily by the
9:25
Speaker 1: B two bomber. So those exists. Uh so two miles
9:30
Speaker 1: everything is gone. Um and this is from the blast
9:33
Speaker 1: and a person if you're like five miles away from
9:36
Speaker 1: that bomb site, you're gonna get hit with third degree
9:39
Speaker 1: burns just from that blast. Yeah, you're gonna be hate
9:42
Speaker 1: in life. Um. So the blast is going to be
9:45
Speaker 1: bad enough. And and again yet just for from for
9:47
Speaker 1: people miles away could be burned to death, um, incinerated, vaporized,
9:52
Speaker 1: just all sorts of terrible stuff. But if you're living
9:55
Speaker 1: outside of that blast zone, you've got problems in the
10:00
Speaker 1: radioactivity that's going to to be generated by it. Because
10:03
Speaker 1: when those bombs explode, they release a lot of radioactive
10:06
Speaker 1: particles of different varieties, and those things go up in
10:09
Speaker 1: the air and they get kind of carried around and
10:12
Speaker 1: stirred up in the atmosphere, but a lot of them
10:14
Speaker 1: are heavy enough that they come back down and basically
10:17
Speaker 1: around the area in a larger area around the bomb's epicenter. Yeah,
10:22
Speaker 1: and we should probably just go over some of these
10:25
Speaker 1: different types of radiation. Some of it you might recognize
10:29
Speaker 1: from various incredible Hulk comic books. But you've got your
10:33
Speaker 1: alpha particles, your beta particles, you've got gamma raise, you've
10:37
Speaker 1: got neutrons. The gamma rais is what got Hulk, right,
10:41
Speaker 1: I think so? Right, Yeah, I'm pretty sure because gamma
10:43
Speaker 1: rays are green and Hulk was green. That's right. I
10:47
Speaker 1: think that's it. And the other sweet sweet purple pants
10:49
Speaker 1: that somehow still fit. So the alpha and beta particles,
10:54
Speaker 1: they are not great, but they are easily stopped. It's
10:58
Speaker 1: probably the best way to say it. Yeah, So here's
11:01
Speaker 1: the thing, Like every everything I tried to read about
11:05
Speaker 1: this is like they would go to great links to
11:07
Speaker 1: be like, well, this one isn't isn't like that much
11:09
Speaker 1: of a problem. This one's way worse, And then finally
11:11
Speaker 1: they throw up their hands and be like, actually, all
11:13
Speaker 1: of this is just gonna be one big giant cluster
11:16
Speaker 1: because depending on the different type of radioactive particle um,
11:20
Speaker 1: there's different situations where they're way worse than the other one.
11:24
Speaker 1: Like a gamma ray is really bad because it can
11:26
Speaker 1: go clear through several inches of lead right into you
11:30
Speaker 1: on the other side of the lead through your body,
11:33
Speaker 1: and then everything it comes in contact with, say all
11:35
Speaker 1: of your cells and tissues and bones and all that stuff.
11:38
Speaker 1: It really screws them up genetically, and you can develop
11:41
Speaker 1: cancer and radiation sickness and all that. That's pretty bad.
11:44
Speaker 1: But then you've got alpha particles where they can be
11:47
Speaker 1: stopped by a piece of paper. They can't even make
11:49
Speaker 1: it through your skin, but they could get all over
11:53
Speaker 1: like crops in the water, and we drink them and
11:56
Speaker 1: eat them, and then they cause all sorts of sorts
11:58
Speaker 1: of problems inside of too. So there's really no good
12:02
Speaker 1: radioactive particle as far as a fallout from a nuclear
12:05
Speaker 1: bomb is concerned. Yeah, not at all. Because so don't
12:09
Speaker 1: you know if you read up on this stuff and
12:10
Speaker 1: it said, oh, a piece of paper, a little bit
12:12
Speaker 1: of plastic, you can stop beta particles and alpha particles.
12:17
Speaker 1: Just think about the area breathing, the water you're drinking,
12:19
Speaker 1: the the maze you're growing. Sure, if you want to
12:24
Speaker 1: get traditional, it's all very dangerous. Yeah, don't just be like, oh,
12:27
Speaker 1: let's make a paper suit out of newspapers and maybe
12:30
Speaker 1: a little paper tried corner and hat out of newspapers.
12:32
Speaker 1: I'll be fine. But like you said, when this bomb hits,
12:35
Speaker 1: that mushroom cloud goes up. Everything's all mixed together and
12:40
Speaker 1: as the wind blows these little uh. I think John
12:43
Speaker 1: Fuller old pal wrote this one a long time ago,
12:45
Speaker 1: right for how stuff works. But he said there are
12:49
Speaker 1: lots of little there. They act like little tiny missiles
12:51
Speaker 1: basically that are just going off all over the place. Yeah.
12:55
Speaker 1: That was the neutrons, right, I yeah, I think the
12:59
Speaker 1: neutrons specific he called the missiles, but they kind of
13:02
Speaker 1: all are. Yeah, they are there. They're super high energy
13:05
Speaker 1: and gamma rays um. Like I said, they can pass
13:08
Speaker 1: right through you. Neutrons are a problem in the relative
13:12
Speaker 1: immediate blast area because they're very heavy, so they don't
13:16
Speaker 1: go nearly as far as they like gamma rays or
13:18
Speaker 1: X rays or alpha particles or beta particles. But they
13:22
Speaker 1: all do damage in their own unique, special snowflake way. Yeah.
13:26
Speaker 1: And it's also I mean, this stuff is being carried
13:29
Speaker 1: around by um the wind, but the actual particles that
13:32
Speaker 1: you're seeing is is actually Earth that is now enriched
13:36
Speaker 1: with this stuff that is poofed up from that crater
13:39
Speaker 1: where Earth Earth used to be. I guess right, and
13:42
Speaker 1: so knowing all this like this was this is like
13:45
Speaker 1: why people started to be like, oh, okay, maybe we
13:48
Speaker 1: should start building fallout shelters to to live in or
13:52
Speaker 1: inhabit for you know, the immediate period after this this
13:56
Speaker 1: nuclear attack, UM, to give us a chance to survive
14:00
Speaker 1: and hopefully, you know, make it a few weeks, and
14:02
Speaker 1: then things will have died down, everybody has forgotten about
14:05
Speaker 1: the whole nuclear holocaust, and we can come back out
14:08
Speaker 1: and restart civilization. That was the really, honestly, if you
14:12
Speaker 1: get down to it, um, the thinking behind fallout shelters
14:16
Speaker 1: in the United States and the sixties and late fifties.
14:19
Speaker 1: All right, should we take a break there and then
14:21
Speaker 1: talk about these things? I think so some more. Yeah,
14:24
Speaker 1: all right, we'll be right back everyone, So chuck, I think, um,
14:49
Speaker 1: since we've got one act under our belt, we need
14:52
Speaker 1: to start the second act by telling everybody they can
14:55
Speaker 1: preorder our book. Hey, I took some vitamins. You know,
15:00
Speaker 1: I've been taking vitamins as much as I can, and
15:03
Speaker 1: I've got this multi vitamin you know, like the worst
15:05
Speaker 1: of vitamin can taste. I've got that horrible vitamin taste
15:09
Speaker 1: just stuck in the back of my throat because it
15:11
Speaker 1: got stuck there for half of a millisecond before it
15:15
Speaker 1: washed down, and it's just left this terrible taste of
15:19
Speaker 1: vitamin coding back there. It's driving me batty. How how
15:24
Speaker 1: is your health with the vitamins? Can you tell a difference? No? None?
15:28
Speaker 1: How's your pa? How's your urine? It's bright yellow? Which
15:31
Speaker 1: makes me just feel like such a chump, especially after
15:34
Speaker 1: our our vitamin supplement episode. Right, didn't we say like
15:36
Speaker 1: we pee most of it out? Yeah, there's good ones
15:40
Speaker 1: for sure, and I like the thing I'm taking go ones,
15:42
Speaker 1: but I just know that there's no telling right now.
15:44
Speaker 1: You're like, I'm using injectables now, pretty much snortable vitamins.
15:50
Speaker 1: So fallout shelters. Uh, it's funny here and and I'm
15:53
Speaker 1: glad John put it this way because it really makes
15:55
Speaker 1: a lot of sense. If you think about an SPF
15:58
Speaker 1: for sunscreen, it's a aim exact way with a fallout shelter.
16:01
Speaker 1: You have a PF, a protection factor, and that is
16:06
Speaker 1: just very simply a representative of UM being nfl out
16:10
Speaker 1: shelter or just being out in the open. And FEMA
16:13
Speaker 1: put out a pamphlet called standards for fallout shelters, and
16:18
Speaker 1: they said you need a PF of forty at least, yeah,
16:22
Speaker 1: if you want to, you know, and that that puts
16:24
Speaker 1: you down to about two point five of the radiation.
16:28
Speaker 1: Which I heard that number and I thought that was
16:30
Speaker 1: too much. Yeah, no, I think, um, what you're really
16:34
Speaker 1: shooting for is something like three hundred that kind of thing.
16:37
Speaker 1: Um that and they're saying like a minimum of forty
16:40
Speaker 1: or else, just you might as well just go lay
16:42
Speaker 1: out in the in the radioactivity for all the protection
16:45
Speaker 1: you're gonna get. Another way to look at that PF
16:47
Speaker 1: numbers that it's the denominator and the fraction of the
16:51
Speaker 1: radioactive exposure that you get compared to being outside of
16:54
Speaker 1: the shelter. So a PF of forty would mean that
16:57
Speaker 1: you get on. I'm more of a action guy than
17:01
Speaker 1: a decimal dude. Oh yeah, how about two? You you
17:05
Speaker 1: like decimals are fractions more? I don't like either one.
17:08
Speaker 1: But I think for our next live show in two
17:12
Speaker 1: you should wear a shirt that says fraction guy, and
17:15
Speaker 1: I'll have one that says decimal dude, and that'll just
17:17
Speaker 1: be our new tour outfit. Fair enough, and you can
17:19
Speaker 1: have yours printed on a button down shirt. Of course. Okay,
17:22
Speaker 1: that's yeah, because nothing looks better than good silk screening
17:26
Speaker 1: on a button down Oxford. Maybe by the time we
17:29
Speaker 1: go on tour again, this horrible vitamin taste will be
17:32
Speaker 1: out of my mouth. Maybe. So so with fallout shelters,
17:37
Speaker 1: there's a couple of kinds. Um if you're going back
17:40
Speaker 1: to the nineteen sixties that people were talking about, and
17:43
Speaker 1: that is the public one and then the private one
17:46
Speaker 1: that you just build at your house like we kind
17:49
Speaker 1: of didn't do. Um, I went down a bit of
17:51
Speaker 1: a rabbit hole. It's and this is be right up
17:54
Speaker 1: your alley. You probably did. This rabbit hole is pretty safe.
17:57
Speaker 1: I bet yeah, depends on how deep I guess. But
18:02
Speaker 1: if you start googling sixties fallout shelters, oh and I did.
18:06
Speaker 1: Oh boy, it's just a treasure trove of articles and pictures. Um.
18:12
Speaker 1: I saw one that these people in Woodland Hills, a
18:15
Speaker 1: suburb of l A bought or part of Greater Los Angeles,
18:19
Speaker 1: bought a house not too long ago, a few years ago,
18:22
Speaker 1: and they found a did you see this one? No?
18:25
Speaker 1: I saw some of Milwaukee this. Oh well, I saw
18:27
Speaker 1: the Milwaukee Article two. That was great. But they found
18:30
Speaker 1: a fifteen foot down under the earth fallout shelter that
18:35
Speaker 1: was fully stopped, like it was like a time capsule
18:39
Speaker 1: from and Brendan Fraser and Christopher Walkin. We're living in it.
18:45
Speaker 1: I can't remember who the mom was. Do you remember
18:47
Speaker 1: I didn't see that? You didn't know? It was cute movie? Yeah?
18:51
Speaker 1: Is that in cine? No? Man, no, no, no, this
18:54
Speaker 1: was blast from the past. Man was great too because
18:58
Speaker 1: the weasels in it? Oh was he? Yeah, Pauly Shure, Yeah,
19:03
Speaker 1: I knew it. That is, I just didn't Polly Shore,
19:05
Speaker 1: Seawan Austin and Brendan, Sean Auston whatever. That guys rich enough,
19:12
Speaker 1: he doesn't care what I say. So I was looking
19:14
Speaker 1: at all these nineteen sixty one period products and just
19:17
Speaker 1: like getting tingly feelings in my body because they were
19:20
Speaker 1: perfectly preserved for the most part, like faded and stuff.
19:23
Speaker 1: But there was a can like a coffee can, but
19:26
Speaker 1: it said multipurpose food Meals for Millions, and so I
19:31
Speaker 1: was like, I gotta find out what this is. And
19:33
Speaker 1: it turns out that Meals for Millions was a nonprofit
19:36
Speaker 1: from way back then. That is now UM International. Now
19:41
Speaker 1: now it's it's it's it's transformed into another name. These days,
19:46
Speaker 1: I think Freedom from Hunger is the new name. But
19:48
Speaker 1: these two guys, Clifford Clinton and Dr Henry Borsuk, took
19:52
Speaker 1: on this task of Borsok was a biochemist at cal Tech,
19:57
Speaker 1: and they took on this project of trying to find
19:59
Speaker 1: the best food to feed, like the cheapest, absolute, most
20:05
Speaker 1: bare bones thing you could put in a package to
20:08
Speaker 1: feed the hungry. And that's what they came up with,
20:12
Speaker 1: was this stuff in a can and it is uh
20:15
Speaker 1: sixty defadded soy grits plus dehydrated potatoes, cabbage, tomatoes, onions, leaks, parsley,
20:24
Speaker 1: and spices, fortified with vitamins and minerals and it comes
20:28
Speaker 1: in a can and you boil it up and eat it.
20:31
Speaker 1: And it was something like two cents per serving. And
20:34
Speaker 1: it was a really ingenious idea. But this became I think,
20:37
Speaker 1: kind of a popular thing for fallout shelters because you
20:39
Speaker 1: could just stop cans and cans of this, like the
20:42
Speaker 1: most bare bones, caloric sort of healthy thing you could
20:45
Speaker 1: get meals for millions. That's pretty great. I did not
20:49
Speaker 1: expect it to actually be as healthy as what you
20:51
Speaker 1: just listed listed off. Yeah, I would love to taste
20:53
Speaker 1: some of it. Multi purpose of wood hills, I know,
20:58
Speaker 1: just call it food, what do you multi purpose food?
21:01
Speaker 1: Is that like a palmaide as well? Maybe One of
21:05
Speaker 1: a food that I ran across um that was pretty popular,
21:09
Speaker 1: especially among government funded fallout shelters, was this kind of
21:13
Speaker 1: like wheat cracker that was made from vulgar wheat, and
21:18
Speaker 1: apparently they were inspired by some crackers that were found
21:22
Speaker 1: in Egyptian tombs that were still edible after a couple
21:26
Speaker 1: of thousand years. So they're like, oh, that would be
21:27
Speaker 1: perfect for fallout shelters, so they kind of recreated those taste. Yeah,
21:33
Speaker 1: multi purpose. Apparently you could shave with them too, you
21:37
Speaker 1: might good. The Milwaukee article was pretty cool though, Um.
21:41
Speaker 1: I think that it said that, um, at the time,
21:43
Speaker 1: they were like three thousand plus personal shelters in the
21:46
Speaker 1: city of Milwaukee alone. Yeah. The thing is is, like,
21:49
Speaker 1: that's that's probably a pretty good number. The thing is,
21:53
Speaker 1: there's no official numbers for the fallout shelters that were
21:57
Speaker 1: built around the Cold War because there were a lot
22:01
Speaker 1: of public or private ones. But there's also public ones too,
22:05
Speaker 1: So let's keep talking about the private ones first, because
22:08
Speaker 1: if we're gonna follow the historical timeline, which I'm in
22:11
Speaker 1: favor of, UM around I think the late nineteen fifties,
22:15
Speaker 1: I think it was nineteen fifty seven in the Eisenhower administration,
22:19
Speaker 1: there was a report that's now called the Gaither Report,
22:22
Speaker 1: and it basically said, um, here's everything we figured out
22:26
Speaker 1: about a nuclear war. Um, the cities are toasts. People
22:31
Speaker 1: are going to die on mass we have no place
22:34
Speaker 1: to put them, for them to shelter in. And everybody's
22:37
Speaker 1: in a lot of trouble if there is a nuclear war.
22:39
Speaker 1: So really the best thing we need to focus on
22:42
Speaker 1: is to prevent a nuclear war from happening. Well, that
22:45
Speaker 1: leaked out and people said, well, what are we gonna do?
22:48
Speaker 1: And this is when the government was like, I don't know,
22:50
Speaker 1: once you build some some shelters and leave us alone.
22:54
Speaker 1: And so people started doing that and it became like
22:56
Speaker 1: a huge craze, and so UM shelters in places like
23:00
Speaker 1: that home in Woodland Hills or that one in Milwaukee,
23:03
Speaker 1: UM that are still around today. In some cases that
23:06
Speaker 1: became like a big deal, like um uh, like adding
23:10
Speaker 1: like a really nice swimming pool, or adding like a
23:14
Speaker 1: rec room or something like that. People turned to fallout
23:18
Speaker 1: shelters and they started building them like crazy. Yeah, And
23:22
Speaker 1: and from that Milwaukee I think it was in Milwaukee
23:24
Speaker 1: was the name of the website. But from what they
23:27
Speaker 1: said was they were being marketed, um as sort of
23:31
Speaker 1: multi purpose wreck rooms that in case the s goes down,
23:36
Speaker 1: it's conveniently um you know, lined with concrete and you
23:40
Speaker 1: could just sort of easily convert it. And I guess
23:42
Speaker 1: you would have some stuff stash there in either a
23:45
Speaker 1: closet or in in bins or something. And when you're
23:49
Speaker 1: not using you know, when there's no nuclear disaster, you're
23:52
Speaker 1: just using it as sort of a playroom or something. Yeah,
23:54
Speaker 1: there was some decorators show in Chicago in the late
23:58
Speaker 1: fifties I think, and they build this thing is the
24:00
Speaker 1: Living or the Family Room of Tomorrow, where it was
24:03
Speaker 1: exactly what you described. It was like a normal functioning
24:06
Speaker 1: family room, but it just happened to be in a
24:09
Speaker 1: basement in like foot thick concrete encased under the dirt. Yeah.
24:14
Speaker 1: I remember seeing when I was a kid, my brother
24:16
Speaker 1: and I did lots of sort of I mean, I
24:20
Speaker 1: guess it was an urban exploring but trespassing suburban exploring,
24:25
Speaker 1: and I remember a couple of distinct times that we
24:28
Speaker 1: saw event pipes just coming out of the earth in
24:32
Speaker 1: the forest and we never saw any entry way or
24:35
Speaker 1: anything like that. But that had to be some sort
24:39
Speaker 1: of fallout shelter. I think, yeah, probably. I mean we
24:42
Speaker 1: were near homes, but not like in the yard. We'd
24:45
Speaker 1: come across a couple of them in our various expeditions,
24:50
Speaker 1: like you know, just a clearly event pipe just coming
24:53
Speaker 1: out of the woodland forest. So yeah, I'm sure that's
24:55
Speaker 1: exactly what it was. I hope. Yeah. Well we didn't
24:58
Speaker 1: dig around if not. Have you ever seen that Hugh
25:01
Speaker 1: Jackman movie where like his wife is kidnap prisoners. Yeah? Man,
25:06
Speaker 1: that was really good. I'm really good. Yeah, great movie. So, Um,
25:13
Speaker 1: that's what's his face is doing the New Dune movie,
25:15
Speaker 1: didn't Evellaneus? Oh? Well, there you go. That's why it
25:18
Speaker 1: was so good. Yeah, he's he's a master. Um. I'm sorry, Chuck,
25:23
Speaker 1: I just can't not correct you. His name is Dennis
25:26
Speaker 1: Dennis Villanov. I'm sorry. So, um I was kidding. Anyway, Um,
25:35
Speaker 1: there was the private fallout shelter trend that just blew
25:38
Speaker 1: up and became a thing, and then UM in nineteen
25:42
Speaker 1: sixty one, President Kennedy sent a letter out. I'm surely
25:46
Speaker 1: it went out to more than just this, but there
25:49
Speaker 1: if you were a Life magazine subscriber, which was pretty
25:51
Speaker 1: substantial back in UM, in the September fifteenth edition, you
25:57
Speaker 1: got a letter from President Kennedy basically saying like, hey,
26:01
Speaker 1: you know this whole possibility of nuclear war thing, Well,
26:05
Speaker 1: we've decided we're going to do something about it. We
26:07
Speaker 1: the government, and we're going to start what's called the
26:11
Speaker 1: National Fallout Shelter Survey. And this with the survey, basically,
26:16
Speaker 1: what we're going to do is send out government officials
26:19
Speaker 1: and they're going to look at buildings all around the
26:21
Speaker 1: country and identify sites that have the potential of serving
26:24
Speaker 1: as a fallout shelter. And everyone says, well, that's great.
26:28
Speaker 1: So like a fallout shelter, so if like a nuclear
26:30
Speaker 1: bomb goes off over our city, we're gonna be saving.
26:32
Speaker 1: He's like, no, don't be ridiculous. That would cost a
26:36
Speaker 1: lot of money. Now this is going to protect you
26:39
Speaker 1: if um, if from radioactive fallout, you'll have to survive
26:43
Speaker 1: the blast, but this will this will hopefully protect you
26:46
Speaker 1: from the fallout afterward. Yeah, and you know, we kind
26:49
Speaker 1: of laugh about that, but I mean, there's no way
26:51
Speaker 1: they could have built enough like adequate shelters to protect
26:55
Speaker 1: all Americans from the blast. No, I mean there was
26:58
Speaker 1: a lot of Americans apparently did look at it at first,
27:01
Speaker 1: and they could have pretended to two hundred billion in
27:05
Speaker 1: in n another cute number. Actually they were like, oh no,
27:10
Speaker 1: that's we can't do that. We don't have that kind
27:12
Speaker 1: of money. So it was, like you said, I think
27:14
Speaker 1: a hundred and hundred and ninety million is what they
27:16
Speaker 1: ended up spending on it, which to me seems like
27:18
Speaker 1: a lot of money to send out some people to
27:21
Speaker 1: look at buildings and decide what was a fall at
27:23
Speaker 1: shelter and what wasn't. Yeah. You know what's really funny
27:26
Speaker 1: is when you look at what people did around the world,
27:28
Speaker 1: what countries did around the world, and how it's so
27:31
Speaker 1: jibes with how those countries are still today. Um, so
27:36
Speaker 1: the US did what we did. The Soviets said that
27:40
Speaker 1: they built a big, extensive system and they had an
27:44
Speaker 1: advanced cooling system and all these filters protecting against everything,
27:49
Speaker 1: and provisions food and water forever and uh, you know,
27:54
Speaker 1: this is this is the press release they put out. Basically,
27:56
Speaker 1: who knows what really happened? Yeah, because I found that
27:59
Speaker 1: on like Russia so Great dot com or whatever, and
28:03
Speaker 1: I mean it was it was like an urban exploration
28:05
Speaker 1: of like an abandoned shelter. But you know, was this
28:08
Speaker 1: just like the biggest one? How many were like that?
28:11
Speaker 1: Supposedly the Soviets boasted of a system that could protect
28:15
Speaker 1: most most of their um citizens from the blast. All right,
28:18
Speaker 1: so that makes sense. Um, Sweden built sixty thousand, which
28:22
Speaker 1: covered about the population. Ts for the other thirty percent,
28:27
Speaker 1: Switzerland built enough shelters for everybody, Okay, God bless him. Uh.
28:32
Speaker 1: The UK said, you know what, We're gonna build enough
28:35
Speaker 1: for our military, our government in the royal family. Yeah,
28:38
Speaker 1: chin up everyone else. And then Australia said, we'll take
28:44
Speaker 1: a pass. We're not gonna build any because no one's
28:46
Speaker 1: gonna mess with us down here. Yeah, they're like everybody's
28:49
Speaker 1: read on the beach. Everyone knows we're fine if the
28:51
Speaker 1: rest of the world's gone up in flame. I think
28:53
Speaker 1: they're probably right. I mean they were, they were, and
28:56
Speaker 1: especially back then. Enough off the map, uh or off
28:59
Speaker 1: the path of of the threat that they didn't even
29:03
Speaker 1: need to sweat it. Yeah, they're like, hey, what's all
29:06
Speaker 1: the all the ruck is up there? So um. But
29:10
Speaker 1: the so the US said, Okay, we've got to do something.
29:13
Speaker 1: Let's at least build these fallout shelters that are going
29:16
Speaker 1: to protect people from radio activity. Um. And so they
29:19
Speaker 1: started building these um why I shouldn't say building. They
29:22
Speaker 1: started going on to private property or public buildings and saying, hey,
29:26
Speaker 1: you've got a really nice basement here, Um, can you
29:29
Speaker 1: take down the human skins and clean it up a
29:32
Speaker 1: little bit. We're gonna put some bulgar wheat biscuits in here,
29:35
Speaker 1: we're gonna put in some multi purpose food, don't ask,
29:39
Speaker 1: and uh, we're gonna turn this place into a fallout shelter.
29:42
Speaker 1: And on their way out, they would slap a sign,
29:44
Speaker 1: very iconic sign, which is black circle with three inverted
29:49
Speaker 1: triangles all pointing towards the center. Um that designated a
29:53
Speaker 1: fallout shelter. And they did this in yellow in the
29:55
Speaker 1: event um of a like a blackout during a nuclear
29:59
Speaker 1: war something, so that you could easily see it. Yeah.
30:01
Speaker 1: Pretty cool. The company three M made these for about
30:04
Speaker 1: a penny each, and they made about four hundred thousand
30:07
Speaker 1: of these signs, and they would stock these things with um,
30:12
Speaker 1: you know, like medical first aid kits, some water drums,
30:16
Speaker 1: those crackers that you talked about that if you add water,
30:20
Speaker 1: could probably double up as like cement patch. Yeah, I guess,
30:25
Speaker 1: but I think people would wrestle you to the ground
30:27
Speaker 1: if you tried to use the water for anything but
30:29
Speaker 1: drinking after, you know, in the event of this sure,
30:32
Speaker 1: I mean, that's one thing we didn't mention. If you
30:33
Speaker 1: go to build your own fallout shelter, um, you know
30:37
Speaker 1: you should have some food, but water obviously it's far
30:39
Speaker 1: more important. We've talked about that a lot, about how
30:42
Speaker 1: long the human body can go without food and water.
30:44
Speaker 1: You gotta have a lot of water. Um. I think
30:47
Speaker 1: I would stock it up with some of that Mike's
30:50
Speaker 1: mighty good Ramen here of course, which by the way, uh,
30:56
Speaker 1: we'd be remiss if we didn't point out that they
30:57
Speaker 1: actually sent us a coupon code for stuff you should
30:59
Speaker 1: know this sners. Oh yeah, this this is not an ad.
31:02
Speaker 1: But they, uh we we talked about that Ramen so much.
31:05
Speaker 1: They said, you know what, tell everyone stuff you should
31:07
Speaker 1: know twenty we'll get them off ramen. If they want
31:11
Speaker 1: to order something very nice to you write, write the
31:13
Speaker 1: number twenty or right out t W E N t
31:17
Speaker 1: WA the number twenty after stuff you should know. So
31:19
Speaker 1: two zero yeah, and you can stock up your own
31:22
Speaker 1: fallout shelter. You can eat that stuff for lunch. Didn't
31:25
Speaker 1: take up a lot of room, good calories, it's multi
31:28
Speaker 1: purpose food. You gotta eat some water for it, though,
31:31
Speaker 1: right but I mean hey, or you can collectively spit
31:34
Speaker 1: in it, I guess, and heat that up. That's grody.
31:37
Speaker 1: You're gonna get that water anyway, though, you know, because
31:39
Speaker 1: you're gonna drink the juice. That's true. Uh So back
31:42
Speaker 1: to the public shelters, they have these pretty well stocked.
31:45
Speaker 1: They said, there was an actual booklet in there that said,
31:48
Speaker 1: if you want a toilet, cut a seat out of
31:51
Speaker 1: a chair and put a bucket under it, and there's
31:53
Speaker 1: your toilet. And so when that pamphlet came out, in
31:56
Speaker 1: particular the American citizen, we said, like, for real, this
31:59
Speaker 1: is our tax dollars are doing. This is what we're
32:02
Speaker 1: getting from our government. Cut a cut a hole in
32:04
Speaker 1: the seat of a chair, and put a bucket under there.
32:06
Speaker 1: That's your advice for the nuclear war, that you're half
32:11
Speaker 1: responsible for having us live under the threat of right,
32:14
Speaker 1: they said, we're not socialists. Take care of yourself. Yeah.
32:18
Speaker 1: So the thing is is like people would people would write,
32:21
Speaker 1: people would um read newspapers, or people would um like
32:26
Speaker 1: watch the news or whatever, and they would be getting
32:29
Speaker 1: one channel of information that was saying like, yeah, here's
32:32
Speaker 1: what this. You know what one megaton bomb could possibly
32:36
Speaker 1: do to your if this blew up over New York City.
32:38
Speaker 1: This is what would happen. And people would say, well,
32:41
Speaker 1: what's the point of having these fallout shelters because if
32:44
Speaker 1: a bomb goes off over New York City, all of
32:47
Speaker 1: those fallout shelters are going to be totally obliterated. There's
32:51
Speaker 1: no point for them. Um and the government and doing
32:55
Speaker 1: something like trying to at least lift some finger people
33:00
Speaker 1: feel less anxious actually had the opposite effect because it
33:04
Speaker 1: drew a lot of attention and focus to the need
33:07
Speaker 1: for fallout shelters, while at the same time reinforcing the
33:11
Speaker 1: idea that these fallout shelters weren't gonna be worth anything
33:14
Speaker 1: for anybody unless maybe you lived in Topeka or somewhere
33:18
Speaker 1: where there there wasn't what's known as a key target
33:22
Speaker 1: that you might actually survive in a fallout shelter that
33:25
Speaker 1: was well stocked and had few enough people, it could work.
33:29
Speaker 1: But for most Americans, especially ones in major cities, you're
33:33
Speaker 1: going to be in bad shape. And the Fallout Shelter
33:35
Speaker 1: program really kind of pointed that out. All right, should
33:39
Speaker 1: we take a break? I think so, all right, we'll
33:41
Speaker 1: take our last break and we'll be back right after this.
34:05
Speaker 1: So before we broke, you said something about unless you
34:08
Speaker 1: live in Topeka, Uh, does in Kansas have silos or
34:11
Speaker 1: no military as I was saying, and I was like, yeah,
34:16
Speaker 1: I'm glad you said something. At least he'll save us
34:18
Speaker 1: the emails. Okay, because that you know, we we did mention,
34:21
Speaker 1: but you know, we talked about game theory earlier about
34:24
Speaker 1: how the reasoning was, No, you don't need to worry
34:27
Speaker 1: if you're in a big city because they aren't a
34:28
Speaker 1: military bases there. But you know that it sort of
34:31
Speaker 1: goes the way of UM that war goes once anything
34:35
Speaker 1: goes wrong. So if one UM bomb from the opposition
34:41
Speaker 1: from the enemy goes to somewhere it isn't supposed to go,
34:44
Speaker 1: then all bets are off basically, and then it's just
34:47
Speaker 1: bomb away. Also, I want to give a shout out
34:50
Speaker 1: to Robert Clara from history dot com who wrote nuclear
34:54
Speaker 1: fallout shelters were Never going to work, who wrote a
34:57
Speaker 1: pretty great article about how this whole pro rams kind
35:00
Speaker 1: of doomed from the start because it all ill conceived,
35:03
Speaker 1: you know. But not only was it ill conceived, they
35:05
Speaker 1: were also like poorly stocked. Some of these things that
35:09
Speaker 1: were designated followed shelters never got their supplies. Um, water
35:13
Speaker 1: drums were leaking, and then um, others worked really well,
35:18
Speaker 1: so well in fact, that there's one they found at
35:20
Speaker 1: the Oyster Adams Bilingual School in d C, which is
35:25
Speaker 1: a school still functioning today part of d C Public Schools,
35:28
Speaker 1: but there is a fallout shelter that's like a um,
35:32
Speaker 1: a time capsule basically that has all of the original
35:35
Speaker 1: provisions and it just frozen in times still. It's really
35:38
Speaker 1: in California, Yeah, basically, um, except this was one of
35:43
Speaker 1: the designated public fallout shelters, but below a school. Yeah.
35:47
Speaker 1: I think didn't they try to build them to how's
35:50
Speaker 1: at least fifty people, and I think they had they
35:54
Speaker 1: recommended for the personal ones that they be at least
35:57
Speaker 1: six and a half feet tall. Yeah, and that was
36:00
Speaker 1: one of the things that sort of, um would have
36:03
Speaker 1: been the toughest I think about fallout shelters, just so
36:05
Speaker 1: many of them were very had very low ceilings. Obviously
36:09
Speaker 1: there's no windows. I mean, it's bunker life is tough going.
36:14
Speaker 1: And they recommended two weeks, and which is nuts to me, Like,
36:19
Speaker 1: there's no way I'm poking my head out after two
36:21
Speaker 1: weeks just to see if it's how how things are
36:24
Speaker 1: going up there? Right? And I mean like there was
36:26
Speaker 1: some logic and reasoning to that two weeks and that
36:28
Speaker 1: there's that you would have exceeded the half life of
36:31
Speaker 1: a lot of the radio new clides that are not
36:34
Speaker 1: enough for created, but yeah, there's plenty that would still
36:37
Speaker 1: be around. Yes, it was. It was never never going
36:39
Speaker 1: to work, like Robert Clara put it, no, And I
36:42
Speaker 1: think that was sort of the idea of what you're
36:45
Speaker 1: talking about, with the public being so disheartened and feeling
36:50
Speaker 1: helpless about our civil defense. Was um like, this is
36:55
Speaker 1: the general public and they didn't think it seemed like
36:57
Speaker 1: a good plan. But it makes me wonder, though that
37:00
Speaker 1: a good thing, Like it sucks to have that kind
37:02
Speaker 1: of mental anxiety that we all collectively had during the
37:05
Speaker 1: Cold War, especially at the height of this stuff, like
37:08
Speaker 1: in the sixties. But I think it might have actually
37:12
Speaker 1: been good because then the public was aware of just
37:15
Speaker 1: how dangerous things were and would prevent a kind of
37:19
Speaker 1: cavalier attitude toward nuclear war because they knew what was
37:22
Speaker 1: at stake, and what was at stake were their very lives. Maybe,
37:26
Speaker 1: I mean, and maybe that's a bottom up sort of
37:29
Speaker 1: like a groundswell of public thought eats its way up
37:32
Speaker 1: into the into government, and you know, I mean, and
37:36
Speaker 1: I guess we'll never know how close we ever got.
37:39
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't think we've ever done one on
37:41
Speaker 1: the nuclear the Cuban missile crisis, have we not? I
37:45
Speaker 1: don't think specifically, but you know, we've been on the
37:48
Speaker 1: brink in a in a way that history has recognized.
37:51
Speaker 1: But I'm curious how close it's been in times that
37:55
Speaker 1: we never even knew about. You know, there's one guy
37:57
Speaker 1: who celebrated every year. I can't remember or what the
38:00
Speaker 1: day is, but it's basically like Save the World Day,
38:03
Speaker 1: where this one um Soviet I guess, a missile commander
38:08
Speaker 1: basically had a few minutes was being told by his
38:11
Speaker 1: computers and all of his underlings that the US had
38:15
Speaker 1: launched a massive strike and that you know, it was
38:19
Speaker 1: up to him to to call and order this counter
38:22
Speaker 1: strike or call the people who would order the counter strike,
38:25
Speaker 1: and he sweated it out. He said that there he
38:28
Speaker 1: just didn't believe that the Americans would have launched an unprovoked,
38:33
Speaker 1: all out nuclear strike like he was being shown. And
38:36
Speaker 1: he stayed his hand and literally saved the world from
38:40
Speaker 1: a nuclear war like single handedly. And the scary thing is, Chuck,
38:44
Speaker 1: is that has happened more than once. Yeah, I'm sure. Yeah.
38:47
Speaker 1: It's funny that, like we're basically the last generation that
38:52
Speaker 1: grew up with any knowledge of the threat of nuclear
38:55
Speaker 1: war like this, like we sort of experienced the tail
38:58
Speaker 1: into the Cold War. Perfect generation. Yeah, but it's it's
39:01
Speaker 1: hard to um and um. The Friendly Fire podcast, which
39:05
Speaker 1: is one of my favorites, the war movie podcasts that uh,
39:08
Speaker 1: our buddies Ben Harrison and Adam Pranica and John Roderick
39:11
Speaker 1: do they're younger. Roderick's you know, a few years older
39:15
Speaker 1: than me, old, so way older than you. But um,
39:19
Speaker 1: John kind of drives this point home a lot about
39:22
Speaker 1: like it's really hard to put into words what that
39:25
Speaker 1: does to a a set of generations when we're all
39:30
Speaker 1: sort of living under this, you know, very real threat
39:34
Speaker 1: that we could all die the worst possible death. And
39:38
Speaker 1: you know, not like oh, you kids have got it
39:40
Speaker 1: made or anything like that, but it's it's a different
39:43
Speaker 1: sort of mindset, you know. Yeah, I mean it definitely is.
39:46
Speaker 1: It definitely affects you from from every stage of your life.
39:49
Speaker 1: You know. I mean it went away by the time
39:51
Speaker 1: we were in college, but you know, I remember my
39:53
Speaker 1: early years. Obviously we were digging a fallout shelter. It was.
39:57
Speaker 1: It was a big threat, and movie and TV reinforce
40:01
Speaker 1: that every day. So, um, if you wanted to build
40:05
Speaker 1: a fallout shelter, we have to say there was um
40:08
Speaker 1: a time in addition to designating fallowoup shelters. By the way,
40:12
Speaker 1: if you find one of those old fallout shelter signs,
40:15
Speaker 1: hang onto it, you can pretty much take it. And
40:18
Speaker 1: unless there's a close watching groundskeeper willie type who takes
40:24
Speaker 1: care of that building, nobody's probably gonna notice it's gone.
40:28
Speaker 1: And the U. S. Government has no idea how many
40:30
Speaker 1: are out there because they never kept track of the
40:32
Speaker 1: fallout shelters. There was no registry or anything. Yeah, I
40:35
Speaker 1: mean they shut started shutting these down in the early seventies,
40:38
Speaker 1: officially started giving away the food. UM sent some of
40:41
Speaker 1: it to organizations in Africa, in Bangladesh. And then those
40:46
Speaker 1: signs started, I think in the mid seventies, started pulling
40:50
Speaker 1: those signs out. And I think finally just three years
40:53
Speaker 1: ago in two thousand seventeen, they they said that they
40:57
Speaker 1: said that they got the last of the signs out
40:58
Speaker 1: of New York City, which and I don't think we mentioned.
41:01
Speaker 1: It's hysterical that they built these fallout shelters in Manhattan
41:04
Speaker 1: and Brooklyn, as if that would you know, that would
41:08
Speaker 1: lead to good right, So, um, so if you if
41:13
Speaker 1: you if you did want to make a fallout shelter,
41:16
Speaker 1: there's um. There was this a pamphlet put out by
41:19
Speaker 1: Oakridge National Laboratory where they basically hired yeah, they had
41:25
Speaker 1: a sideline and studying nuclear disaster survival, um what like
41:29
Speaker 1: you couldn't tell with their beards, you know, but um,
41:32
Speaker 1: the this pamphlet basically was the result of Oakridge hiring
41:36
Speaker 1: a bunch of families, regular old American families and saying, um,
41:41
Speaker 1: a nuclear war is happening right now, go build a
41:43
Speaker 1: fallout shelter. Here's your instructions, and then seeing how easy
41:46
Speaker 1: it could be done, and then adjusting the instructions and
41:49
Speaker 1: so on and so forth until they finally got to
41:51
Speaker 1: this pamphlet, and the pamphlet basically came up with this
41:55
Speaker 1: really good fallout shelter where you just basically dug a
41:59
Speaker 1: trend in the ground that was several feet deep, covered
42:03
Speaker 1: it with wood poles, covered the wood poles with something
42:06
Speaker 1: like cloth, the old bed sheets something like that, put
42:09
Speaker 1: dirt on it, put shower curtains something waterproof, and then
42:13
Speaker 1: put more dirt on that. And they actually figured out
42:16
Speaker 1: that this particular fallout shelter had like a protection factor
42:21
Speaker 1: of like three hundred. Yeah that and it would also
42:24
Speaker 1: survive a blast that most houses would not survive because
42:28
Speaker 1: you're you're just basically hunkered down in the earth, and
42:31
Speaker 1: it would it would work for you if you wanted to.
42:34
Speaker 1: And they said that, um, it can be done. They
42:36
Speaker 1: used the example that to non athletic college age girls
42:40
Speaker 1: did it in thirty six hours. That was that was
42:43
Speaker 1: how they were selling it. We had a couple of
42:45
Speaker 1: girl couch potatoes, right, look, at them. Wow. Yeah. When
42:51
Speaker 1: I was reading about that, I was I figured you'd
42:54
Speaker 1: get maybe a twenty out of that. What do you
42:58
Speaker 1: mean for PF No One? Yeah, so there you go.
43:04
Speaker 1: Thank you, Akridge boys, getty up Papa. And since Chuck
43:08
Speaker 1: said that, everybody, it's time for a listener mail. All right,
43:13
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this, uh a series of apologies to Australia.
43:19
Speaker 1: Oh boy. So before the we get into the email, UM,
43:24
Speaker 1: I do think we should address this that we've had
43:27
Speaker 1: some ads running in Australia only that have been no good. Uh.
43:32
Speaker 1: And these aren't ads that we knew about. These aren't
43:34
Speaker 1: ads that we read. Um, we have a separate company
43:39
Speaker 1: in Australia that's doing that for us, and everything is
43:42
Speaker 1: under review right now because um, we don't want these
43:46
Speaker 1: ads out there. So yeah, it's a it's a new
43:48
Speaker 1: relationship when we're kind of figuring each other out, that's right.
43:52
Speaker 1: But we do want to say that none of these
43:54
Speaker 1: ads were our decision. Um. If you're out there and
43:57
Speaker 1: your interest is peaked and you're like, oh my gosh,
43:59
Speaker 1: what are they talking about, I'll never know they were.
44:01
Speaker 1: You know, there were ads for like mining companies and stuff.
44:04
Speaker 1: Like that, among other things, not super s y s
44:06
Speaker 1: K type stuff. That's right, and and we wanted to
44:09
Speaker 1: address it head on, uh, but also we wanted to
44:12
Speaker 1: address our own uh foibles in the billabongs terminology that
44:18
Speaker 1: we were talking about in the Wetlands episode just shameful, man,
44:21
Speaker 1: it is. And this is something we should know, even
44:23
Speaker 1: though we are not Australians, but we use the term
44:26
Speaker 1: aborigines very sort of willy nilly uh. And that is
44:30
Speaker 1: this um is an email from Tanita she said, Uh
44:33
Speaker 1: in the episode and Wetlands, he used a number of
44:35
Speaker 1: terms talking about billabongs that were not correct terminology. The
44:39
Speaker 1: term aborigines is considered outdated and defensive as it groups
44:44
Speaker 1: all indigenous groups into one term and as connotations of
44:48
Speaker 1: colonial Australia. Some of the current terms and correct terms
44:53
Speaker 1: for traditional owners of Australia uh include Aboriginal people, Indigenous
44:59
Speaker 1: First Nations people. And this is something that you know,
45:02
Speaker 1: we just should have known. So yeah, Plus, I mean
45:04
Speaker 1: it applies to more than just um, the native people
45:08
Speaker 1: of Australia too, you know. So of course, yeah, and
45:11
Speaker 1: we got a bunch of emails from people that said,
45:13
Speaker 1: if you really want to do right by these people.
45:15
Speaker 1: You need to research the exact people that you're talking about,
45:19
Speaker 1: like the Palawa people from Tasmania where she's from, or
45:23
Speaker 1: the Annawan people from the area around Armadale where she
45:27
Speaker 1: lives now, and we didn't do that. And she said
45:30
Speaker 1: there were two hundred and fifty different languages in Australia
45:33
Speaker 1: before invasion, only a hundred and twenty year now spoken.
45:37
Speaker 1: Billabong in fact, comes from the uh We're a jury
45:41
Speaker 1: language from central New South Wales and is now a
45:44
Speaker 1: common Australian English term. And that is from Tinita and
45:48
Speaker 1: many others. Thank you so much for taking it easy
45:51
Speaker 1: on us, Tanita. That was very nice, super Australian of
45:54
Speaker 1: you as well, just laid back in nice and not
45:58
Speaker 1: at all like chest pokey, So we appreciate that. That's right.
46:01
Speaker 1: And you know, if you're in the United States and
46:04
Speaker 1: you're I'm not quite sure what even this means would
46:07
Speaker 1: basically be like just saying Africa as a lump all
46:10
Speaker 1: term for like any tribe in Africa and the culture
46:14
Speaker 1: and the language that is very specific to that region
46:18
Speaker 1: and we were not hip to that. So thanks again.
46:22
Speaker 1: Who was that, Tanita? Yeah, okay, thanks again, Tanita. Thanks
46:25
Speaker 1: again Australia for taking such good care of us over there.
46:29
Speaker 1: We appreciate you, guys, and thanks to everybody who listens
46:32
Speaker 1: to Stuff you Should Know. And if you want to
46:34
Speaker 1: get in touch with us for any reason, no matter
46:36
Speaker 1: where you live in the world, no matter what language
46:38
Speaker 1: you speak, you can send us an email to Stuff
46:42
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46:48
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