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Transcript

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

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hey guys, it's me, Josh. And Fallout shelters have been
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: on my mind a lot lately. We've been doing some
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: episodes about the Cold War, and they played a big
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: role in that. And that second season of Fallout, the
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: TV show based on the game, it's really good. And
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: on Wednesday, I got trapped in the Fallout shelter in
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: the basement of an abandoned school for 18 hours. And
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: someone finally found me. and the fire department had to
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: come cut a hole in the steel door with a
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: huge saw. So I thought that maybe releasing our episode
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: on fallout shelters again as this week's select would be
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: a good idea. It came out in 2020, and it's
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: pretty good, and I hope you enjoy it.
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Kablooey Clark.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: There's Charles W. Bam Bam Bryant and Jerry Radioactive Roland.
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: Oh, boy.
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: And this is Stuff You Should Know.
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: You still got it.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: After all these years.
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: You still got it.
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: Yep.
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: Hey, I think before we get going, we should talk
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: very briefly about our audio book.
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. Yeah.
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: Because this week in real time, we are each recording
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: our respective parts for the audio book. And first of all,
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: we just want to tell everyone there's going to be
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: an audio book version.
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, spoiler.
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: Of Stuff You Should Know, colon, and Mostly Incomplete Guide
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: to Very Interesting Things.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: Man, still. An incomplete compendium of mostly interesting things.
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so we're trying to push that out as a.
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: You know, get both is what I say. But if
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: you're into audiobooks, we're doing one. But also, I just
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: want to make sure people know what they're getting. And
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: I put this on the Stuff You Should Know Army page.
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: They're not getting 27 new podcast episodes.
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: No.
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: And they should know that because our podcast is unscripted conversation.
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: An audiobook is us reading an audiobook. And rather than
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: just weirdly trading lines, reading from a script, which would
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: I think that would dash a lot of people's image
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: of what we do. We are each reading chapters, and
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: I think they're going to mix in some stuff here
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: and there. But, yeah, I mean, it's going to be
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: great and fun, but it's not podcast episodes. We don't
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: get to just fart around and make jokes. Like, we've
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: got to read our book.
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: Oh, man, we will be kept in line. If we
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: tried to fart around and make jokes, it would not
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: be good. There's this whole time is money ethos and yelling,
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: sometimes crying. It's a real stressful situation, everybody.
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: How did that go for you yesterday? Did you enjoy yourself?
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: I just told you there's a lot of yelling and crying.
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: It was very stressful. Yeah, it was fun. It reminded
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: me a lot of recording The End of the World. Yeah, exactly. Because,
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: you know, I wrote those and then I read them. Right.
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: So it was very similar to that, except a lot
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: less heavy.
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I was slightly nervous at first for some reason
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: after talking for 12 years, probably just because... you weren't there.
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: But then it was like, you know, it was fine.
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: Did Fleet, the director, calm you, make you feel better?
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, you know, I got in my groove.
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: I felt pretty comfy by the end of it.
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So, I mean, it is fun. It's definitely a
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: lot of extra work this week, but it's kind of cool.
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: You know, at the end, we're going to have a
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: bona fide audio book.
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: That's right. And a bona fide book that you can
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: pre-order now. And we're also working on getting that pre-order
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: gift available to the UK and Australia and other parts
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: of the world because we have different publishers there. It's
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: not like we were trying to exclude everyone.
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: No, no, no. But we are moving heaven and earth
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: to get it done. And yeah, if you're in the
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: US and Canada and you pre-order, if you haven't gotten
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: your poster yet, worry not. You're going to get your
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: pre-order gift eventually.
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: Wow. So for the 15, 17 people who stuck around,
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: prepare to learn about fallout shelters because that's ultimately what
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: we're here to talk about today.
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: That's right. Actually, before that, I have to say one
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: more thing.
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: Oh, God.
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: I posted that squirrel attack video on my Instagram, you know,
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: that we talked about on the episode. Yeah. Because people
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: kept asking, so I put it up. I'm at Chuck
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: the Podcaster. If you want to see a squirrel go
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: berserk and literally fly through the air and hit me
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: in the leg, then you can see that. It's been
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: viewed like 15,000 times now.
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: One of these days, I hope you'll fess up to
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: what you did to provoke that squirrel.
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: I mean, the whole thing's there. You see me exit
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: my house, so... Yeah, but I.
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: Mean, we didn't know, like, what happened a half hour before. Right.
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: You know, that had been ongoing for the last week
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: or so. Yeah, that's true.
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: That's true.
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: No backstory.
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: So now, I think we're going to talk about fallout shelters. Because, Chuck,
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: your house has a basement... But it's exposed on one
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: side to the outdoors. It's not an in-ground basement as
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: far as I know. And hopefully I'm not divulging too
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: much information about your house so weird fans will be
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: able to find it and show up.
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: Well, actually, you know, one side of it is exposed
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: to the world. But the other side is, you know,
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: 10 feet of earth and red clay. Like it could
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: have been a great fallout shelter had it not been
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: for that one side.
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: Sure. But there are things you could do. Or could
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: have done. I think we should use past tense here.
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: Because the need for a fallout shelter as far as
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: a nuclear war goes is vanishingly remote these days. Yeah.
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: I like to think. I don't think we should get
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: into any fear mongering here.
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: No, I agree.
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: But there are a few things you could have done
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: or could do to build a fallout shelter with that
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: good side, I guess. And we're going to talk about
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: that today. But mainly what we're talking about with fallout
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: shelters is almost kind of like this examination of the
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: world psyche during the Cold War to where as the
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: nuclear arsenals of the Soviet Union and the United States
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: started to build up in step with one another and
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: we were suddenly in a nuclear arms race where just
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: 10 years before there were no such thing as nuclear weapons,
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: people started to realize like, oh man, if one of
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: these goes off near me, I'm in big trouble. And
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: they started looking around to the government to say, hey,
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: what should I do? And at first, the government was like,
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: you know, figure it out yourself. And then eventually, the
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: government kind of got a little more involved. And before
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: you know it, we had a national fallout shelter program.
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: As feeble and terrible as it was, at least we
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: had one.
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, what's really funny is when you read up on
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: this stuff and you learn that President Kennedy, John F. Kennedy,
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: that is, Ask Congress for $ 100 million to build public
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: fallout shelters.
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: That is such an adorable number now. It is. That
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: would build like 10 fallout shelters these days.
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Maybe. Maybe. That's like the amount of money that
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: would take to get like a motorcade to the Capitol
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: from the White House basically, you know?
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but it was a real threat back then. And
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: I can't remember what episode. It may have been nuclear radiation–
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: We did one on the disaster in Japan.
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: We've done a couple on this. But I know that
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: I told the story of my father like having us
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: sort of do 20 percent of a fallout shelter when
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: I was 10 or 12 years old after the movie
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: The Day After aired on television.
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I remember that. Yeah.
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: I mean, you know, it was my brother and I
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: taking out– digging out buckets of dirt and carrying them
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: out in the woods and dumping them for probably three
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: or four weekends and then we stopped.
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: That's awesome. So you guys were 20 percent covered if
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: something happened. Yeah.
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: I mean, we could have. Yeah, it was pretty gross.
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: So was it akin to this this this shelter that
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: we were going to go over at the end? Was
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: it like that?
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: Well, I mean, it eventually could have been, which is
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: to say a, you know, kind of a concrete room
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: underground surrounded by earth.
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. No, I'm saying like the kind where it's
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: like you dig a trench and put some wood poles.
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: Oh, no, no, no.
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: This is part of.
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: My basement. Like, my dad had a workshop, and on
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: the interior wall of the workshop, he knocked down the
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: cinder block wall, and we just started digging.
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: Oh, wow.
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: Which I'm sure was super safe to the foundation of
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: the house.
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: Sure, right. He's like, oh, it's probably not load-bearing.
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly.
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: But yeah, there was definitely a point in time, especially
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: during the height of the Cold War, where it was like,
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: this is, we're really in danger here. The world was
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: just kind of walking around, just twitching and shaking at
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: the idea of this. And part of the problem was,
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: Not just the idea that a bomb was going to
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: go off and just blow cities apart. Because apparently there
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: was this one of the nuclear deterrent theories, the game
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: theories that people kind of operated under said, no, you
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: know what? If we ever engage in nuclear war, we're
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: just going to be attacking military installations side to side.
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: And so we don't really have to worry about that
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: for people in New York or D.C. or, you know, Atlanta, wherever,
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: any of the major metropolitan cities. We don't have to
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: worry about those cities getting leveled. But there's going to
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: be a huge problem for the people living there because
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: there's such a thing as radioactive fallout. It's not just
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: the bomb that gets you. It's the fallout afterward.
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, if you're talking about a nuclear bomb,
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: a nuclear warhead, it depends on what kind. You know,
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: back then it was different than it is now. Mm-hmm.
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: Let's say a one megaton H-bomb back in the day
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: would completely wipe out everything within about two miles. from
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: where it hit.
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I know I said we weren't going to fearmonger, Chuck,
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: but I found out that there is a bomb in
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: the U.S. arsenal called the B-83, which is 1.2 megatons,
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: and it can be carried around very easily by the
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: B-2 bomber. So those exist.
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: So two miles, everything is gone. And this is from
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: the blast. And a person, if you're like five miles
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: away from that bomb site, you're going to get hit
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: with third-degree burns just from that blast.
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you're going to be hating life. So the blast
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: is going to be bad enough. And again, yeah, just
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: for people miles away could be burned to death, incinerated, vaporized,
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: just all sorts of terrible stuff. But if you're living
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: outside of that blast zone, you got problems in the
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: radioactivity that's going to be generated by it. Because when
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: those bombs explode, they release a lot of radioactive particles
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: of different varieties. And those things go up in the
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: air and they get kind of carried around and stirred
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: up in the atmosphere. But a lot of them are
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: heavy enough that they come back down in basically around
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: the area, in a larger area around the bomb's epicenter.
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and We should probably just go over some of
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: these different types of radiation. Some of it you might
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: recognize from various Incredible Hulk comic books.
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: But you've got your alpha particles, your beta particles. You've
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: got gamma rays. You've got neutrons.
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: The gamma rays is what got Hulk, right?
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: I think so, right?
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: I'm pretty sure.
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: Because gamma rays are green and Hulk was green.
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: I think that's it.
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: And he had those sweet, sweet purple pants that somehow
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: still fit.
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: For sure.
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: So the alpha and beta particles, they are not great,
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: but they are easily stopped is probably the best way
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: to say it.
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So here's the thing. Like everything I tried to
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: read about this was like they would go to great
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: lengths to be like, well, this one isn't like that
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: much of a problem. This one's way worse. And then
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: finally they'd throw up their hands and be like, actually,
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: all of this is just going to be one big
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: giant cluster. Right. Because depending on the different type of
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: radioactive particle– there's different situations where they're way worse than
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: the other one. Like a gamma ray is really bad
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: because it can go clear through several inches of lead
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: right into you on the other side of the lead
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: through your body. And then everything it comes in contact with,
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: say all of your cells and tissues and bones and
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: all that stuff, it really screws them up genetically and
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: you can develop cancer and radiation sickness and all that.
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: That's pretty bad. But then you've got alpha particles where
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: they can be stopped by a piece of paper. They
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: can't even make it through your skin, but they could
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: get all over like crops in the water and we
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: drink them and eat them. And then they cause all
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: sorts of problems inside of you too. So there's really
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: no good radioactive particle as far as a fallout from
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: a nuclear bomb is concerned.
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, not at all. So don't, you know, if you
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: read up on this stuff and it said, oh, a
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: piece of paper or a little bit of plastic can
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: stop beta particles and alpha particles. Just think about the
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: air you're breathing, the water you're drinking, the maze you're growing. Sure.
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: Do you want to get traditional?
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: It's all very dangerous.
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Don't just be like, oh, let's make a paper
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: suit out of newspapers and maybe a little paper tri-cornered
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: hat out of newspapers. I'll be fine.
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: But like you said, when this bomb hits, that mushroom
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: cloud goes up. Everything's all mixed together. And as the
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: wind blows, these little, I think John Fuller, our old pal,
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: wrote this one a long time ago, right? Yep. for
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: How Stuff Works, but he said there are lots of little,
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: they act like little tiny missiles, basically, that are just
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: going off all over the place.
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that was the neutrons, right?
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think the neutrons specific, he called the missiles,
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: but they kind of all are.
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they are. They're super high energy and gamma rays,
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: like I said, they can pass right through you. Neutrons
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: are a problem in the relative immediate blast area because
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: They're very heavy, so they don't go nearly as far as, say,
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: like gamma rays or X-rays or alpha particles or beta particles.
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: But they all do damage in their own unique special
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: snowflake way.
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's also, I mean, this stuff is being
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: carried around by the wind. But the actual particles that
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: you're seeing is actually Earth that is now enriched with
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: this stuff. That is poofed up from that crater where
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: Earth used to be, I guess.
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: Right. And so knowing all this, like this was this
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: is like why people started to be like, oh, OK,
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: maybe we should start building fallout shelters to live in
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: or inhabit for, you know, the immediate period after this
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: this nuclear attack to give us a chance to survive.
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: And hopefully, you know, make it a few weeks and
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: then things will die down. Everybody will have forgotten about
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: the whole nuclear holocaust. And we can come back out
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: and restart civilization. That was the really honestly, if you
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: get down to it, the thinking behind fallout shelters in
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: the United States in the 60s and late 50s. All right.
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: Should we take a break there then talk about these things?
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: I think so.
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: Some more?
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: All right. We'll be right back, everyone.
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: So, Chuck, I think since we've got one act under
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: our belt, we need to start the second act by
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: telling everybody they can preorder our book.
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: Hey, I took some vitamins, you know. I've been taking
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: vitamins as much as I can. Oh, yeah? And I've
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: got this multivitamin, you know, like the worst a vitamin
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: can taste. I've got that horrible vitamin taste just stuck
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: in the back of my throat because it got stuck
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: there for a half of a millisecond before it washed down.
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: And it's just left this terrible taste of vitamin coating
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: back there. And it's driving me batty.
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: How is your health with the vitamins? Can you tell
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: the difference?
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: No, none.
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: How's your pee? How's your urine?
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: It's bright yellow, which makes me just feel like such
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: a chump, especially after our vitamin supplement episode. Oh, right.
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: Didn't we say like we pee most of it out?
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah. There's good ones for sure. And I like to
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: think I'm taking good ones, but I just know that
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: there's no telling right now.
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: You're like, I'm using injectables now.
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: Pretty much snortable vitamins.
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: So fallout shelters, it's funny here, and I'm glad John
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: put it this way because it really makes a lot
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: of sense. If you think about an SPF for sunscreen.
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: It's the same exact way with a fallout shelter. You
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: have a PF, a protection factor. And that is just
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: very simply a representative of being in a fallout shelter
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: or just being out in the open. And FEMA put
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: out a pamphlet called Standards for Fallout Shelters. And they said,
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: you need a PF of 40.
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: At least.
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, if you want to, you know. And that puts
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: you down to about 2.5% of the radiation, which I
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: heard that number and I thought that was too much.
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I think what you're really shooting for is
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: something like 300, that kind of thing. And they're saying
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: like a minimum of 40 or else you might as
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: well just go lay out in the radioactivity for all
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: the protection you're going to get. Another way to look
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: at that PF number is that it's the denominator and
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: the fraction of the radioactive exposure that you get. compared
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: to being outside of the shelter. So a PF of
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: 40 would mean that you get one 40th. I'm more
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: of a fraction guy than a decimal dude.
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah?
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: Uh-huh. How about you? You like decimals or fractions more?
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: I don't like either one, but I think for our
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: next live show in 2022, you should wear a shirt
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: that says fraction guy, and I'll have one that says
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: decimal dude.
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: And that'll just be our new tour outfit.
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: Fair enough.
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: And you can have yours printed on a button-down shirt,
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: of course.
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: Okay. Because nothing looks better than good silk screening on
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: a button down Oxford. Maybe by the time we go
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: on tour again, this horrible vitamin taste will be out
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: of my mouth.
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: Maybe so. So with fallout shelters, there's a couple of
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: kinds if you're going back to the 1960s that people
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: were talking about. And that is the public one and
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: then the private one that you just build at your
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: house like we kind of didn't do. I went down
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: a bit of a rabbit hole, and this would be
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: right up your alley. You probably did this.
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: Rabbit hole's pretty safe, I bet. Yeah.
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: Depends on how deep, I guess.
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: But if you start Googling 60s fallout shelters— Oh, and
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: I did. Oh, boy. It's just a treasure trove of
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: articles and pictures. I saw one that these people in
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: Woodland Hills, a suburb of L.A., or part of greater
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: Los Angeles, bought a house— Not too long ago, a
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: few years ago, and they found a– did you see
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: this one?
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: No, I saw some in Milwaukee.
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: Oh, well, I saw that Milwaukee article too.
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: That was great.
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: But they found a 15-foot-down under-the-earth fallout shelter.
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: That was fully stocked. It was like a time capsule
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: from 1961.
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: And Brendan Fraser and Christopher Walken were living in it.
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: I can't remember who the mom was. Do you remember?
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: Oh, I didn't see that.
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: Oh, you didn't? No. No. It was a cute movie. Yeah?
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: Was that Encino Man?
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: No, no, no. This was Blast from the Past. Oh, okay.
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: Encino Man was great, too, because the weasel's in it.
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: Oh, was he?
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Pauly Shore.
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I knew it then.
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: Is.
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: I just didn't.
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: Pauly Shore, Sean Austin, and Brendan Fraser.
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: Sean Aston.
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: Whatever. That guy's rich enough. He doesn't care what I say.
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: So I was looking at all these 1961 period products
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: and just, like, getting tingly feelings in my body because
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: they were perfectly preserved for the most part, like, faded
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: and stuff. But there was a can, like a coffee can,
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: but it said, multi-purpose food, Meals for Millions. And so
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: I was like, I got to find out what this is.
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: And it turns out that Meals for Millions was a
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: nonprofit from way back then that is now- Pepper International. No,
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: now it's transformed into another name these days. I think
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: Freedom from Hunger is the new name.
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: But these two guys, Clifford Clinton and Dr. Henry Borsuk,
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: took on this task of– Borsuk was a biochemist at Caltech.
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: And they took on this project of trying to find
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: the best food to feed, like the cheapest, absolute most
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: bare bones thing you could put in a package to
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: feed the hungry.
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: And that's what they came up with was this stuff
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: in a can. And it is 68% defatted soy grits.
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: Plus dehydrated potatoes, cabbage, tomatoes, onions, leeks, parsley, and spices
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: fortified with vitamins and minerals. And it comes in a
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: can and you boil it up and eat it. And
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: it was something like two cents per serving.
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: And it was a really ingenious idea, but this became,
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: I think, kind of a popular thing for fallout shelters
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: because you could just stock cans and cans of this,
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: like the most bare bones caloric sort of healthy thing
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: you could get.
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: Meals for millions. That's pretty great. I did not expect
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: it to actually be as healthy as what you just
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: listed off.
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I would love to taste some of it.
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: What?
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: Multi-purpose food.
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: It just traveled the woodland hills. I know. Just call
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: it food. What do you mean multi-purpose food?
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: I don't know. Is it like a pomade as well
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: or something?
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: A food that I ran across that was pretty popular,
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: especially among government-funded fallout shelters, was this kind of like,
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: wheat cracker that was made from bulgur wheat. And apparently
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: they were inspired by some crackers that were found in
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: Egyptian tombs that were still edible after a couple thousand years.
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: So they're like, oh, that'd be perfect for fallout shelters.
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: So they kind of recreated those.
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: Tasteless, edible.
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, multipurpose, apparently. You could shave with them, too.
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: You might could. That Milwaukee article is pretty cool, though.
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: I think it said that at the time there were
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: like 3,000-plus personal shelters in the city of Milwaukee alone.
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the thing is, like, that's probably a pretty good number.
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: The thing is there's no official numbers for the fallout
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: shelters that were built around the Cold War because there
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: were a lot of private ones, but there was also
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: public ones too. So let's keep talking about the private
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: ones first because if we're going to follow the historical timeline—
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: which I'm in favor of. Around, I think, the late 1950s,
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: I think it was 1957, in the Eisenhower administration, there
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: was a report that's now called the Gaither Report. And
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: it basically said, here's everything we figured out about a
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: nuclear war. the cities are toast. People are going to
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: die en masse. We have no place to put them
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: for them to shelter in. And everybody's in a lot
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: of trouble if there is a nuclear war. So really,
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: the best thing we need to focus on is to
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: prevent a nuclear war from happening. Well, that leaked out.
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: And people said, well, what are we going to do?
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: And this is when the government was like, I don't know,
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: why don't you build some shelters and leave us alone?
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: And so people started doing that. And it became like
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: a huge craze. And so shelters in places like that
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: home in Woodland Hills or that one in Milwaukee that
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: are still around today in some cases, that became like
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: a big deal, like adding like a really nice swimming
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: pool or adding like a rec room or something like that.
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: People turned to fallout shelters, and they started building them
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: like crazy.
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and from that Milwaukee, I think it was in
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: Milwaukee was the name of the website.
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: But from what they said was they were being marketed
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: as sort of multipurpose rec rooms that in case the
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: S goes down, it's conveniently, you know, lined with concrete.
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: And you could just sort of easily convert it. And
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: I guess you would have some stuff stashed there in
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: either a closet or in bins or something.
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: When you're not using it, you know, when there's no
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: nuclear disaster, you're just using it as sort of a
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: playroom or something.
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there was some decorators show in Chicago in the
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: late 50s, I think, and they build this thing as
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: the living or the family room of tomorrow. Yeah, it
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: was exactly what you described. It was like a normal
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: functioning family room, but it just happened to be in
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: a basement in like foot thick concrete encased under the dirt.
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I remember seeing when I was a kid, my
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: brother and I did lots of Sort of, I mean,
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: I guess it wasn't urban exploring, but... Trespassing? Suburban exploring.
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: Sure, okay.
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: And I remember a couple of distinct times that we
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: saw vent pipes just coming out of the earth in
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: the forest. And we never saw any entryway or anything
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: like that. But that had to be some sort of
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: fallout shelter, I think.
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, probably.
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: I mean, they were near homes. But not, like, in
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: the yard. We'd come across a couple of them in
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: our various expeditions.
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: Like, you know, just clearly a vent pipe just coming
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: out of the woodland forest floor.
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm sure that's exactly what it was. I hope.
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, we didn't dig around.
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: If not, have you ever seen that Hugh Jackman movie where, like,
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: his wife is kidnapped?
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: Prisoners?
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, man, that was really good.
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: I mean, really good.
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, great movie. That's What's-His-Face doing the new Dune movie.
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: Denis Villeneuve.
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: Oh, well, there you go. That's why it was so good.
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he's a master.
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: I'm sorry, Chuck. I just can't not correct you. His
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: name is Dennis. Dennis Villeneuve. I'm sorry.
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: Okay, I mispronounced it.
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: So, I was kidding. Anyway, there was the private fallout
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: shelter trend that just blew up and became a thing.
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: And then in 1961, President Kennedy sent a letter out.
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: Surely it went out to more than just this. But
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: if you were a Life magazine subscriber, which was pretty
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: substantial back in 1961, in the September 15th edition, you
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: got a letter from President Kennedy basically saying like, hey,
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: you know, this whole possibility of nuclear war thing. Well,
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: we've decided we're going to do something about it. We,
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: the government. And we're going to start what's called the
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: National Fallout Shelter Survey. And with the survey, basically what
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: we're going to do is send out government officials. And
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: they're going to look at buildings all around the country
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: and identify sites that have the potential of serving as
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: a fallout shelter. And everyone says, well, that's great. So
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: like a fallout shelter. So if like a nuclear bomb
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: goes off over our city, we're going to be safe.
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: It's like, no, don't be ridiculous. A lot of money. No,
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: this is going to protect you from radioactive fallout. You'll
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: have to survive the blast, but this will hopefully protect
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: you from the fallout afterward.
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and, you know, we kind of laugh about that, but,
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: I mean, there's no way they could have built enough, like,
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: adequate shelters to protect all Americans from the blast.
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: No, I mean, there was a lot of Americans. Apparently,
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: they did look at it at first. They could have
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: pretended to. And it was going to be, like, $ 200
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: billion in... In 1961 dollars.
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: That's another cute number, actually.
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: They were like, oh, no, we can't do that. We
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: don't have that kind of money. So it was like
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: you said, I think $ 190 million is what they ended
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: up spending on it, which to me seems like a
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: lot of money to send out some people to look
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: at buildings and decide what was a fallout shelter and
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: what wasn't.
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, what's really funny is when you look
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: at what people did around the world, what countries did
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: around the world, and how it so jibes with how
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: those countries are still today. So the U.S. did what
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: we did. The Soviets said that they built a big
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: extensive system and they had an advanced cooling system and
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: all these filters protecting against everything and provisions, food and
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: water forever and everything. You know, this is this is
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: the press release they put out, basically. Who knows what
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: really happened?
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because I found that on like Russia's so great
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: dot com or whatever. I mean, it was it was
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: like an urban exploration of like an abandoned shelter. But,
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: you know, was this just like the biggest one? How
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: many were like that? Right. Supposedly, the Soviets boasted of
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: a system that could protect most most of their citizens
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: from the blast.
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: All right, so that makes sense. Sweden built 65,000, which
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: covered about 70% of the population.
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: TS for the other 30%.
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: Switzerland built enough shelters for everybody. Okay. God bless them.
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: The UK said, you know what? We're going to build
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: enough for our military, our government, and the royal family.
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, chin up, everyone else.
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: And then Australia said, nah, we'll take a pass. We're
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: not going to build any because no one's going to
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: mess with us down here.
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they're like, everybody's right on the beach. Everyone knows
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: we're fine if the rest of the world's gone up
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: in flames. I think they're probably right.
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: I mean, they were, and especially back then, enough off
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: the map or off the path of the threat that
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: they didn't even need to sweat it.
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah. They're like, hey, what's all the ruckus up there?
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: So the U.S. said, okay, we've got to do something.
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: Let's at least build these fallout shelters that are going
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: to protect people from radioactivity. And so they started building these— well,
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: I shouldn't say building. They started going on to private
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: property or public buildings and saying, hey, you've got a
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: really nice basement here.
• 30:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: Can you take down the human skins and clean it
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: up a little bit? We're going to put some bulgur
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: wheat biscuits in here. We're going to put in some
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: multipurpose food, don't ask. And we're going to turn this
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: place into a fallout shelter. And on their way out,
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: they would slap a sign, a very iconic sign, which
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: was a black circle saying, with three inverted triangles all
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: pointing toward the center that designated a fallout shelter. And
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: they did this in yellow in the event of like
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: a blackout during a nuclear war or something so that
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: you could easily see it.
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, pretty cool. The company 3M made these for about
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: a penny each, and they made about 400,000 of these signs.
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: And they would stock these things with, you know, like
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: medical first aid kits, some water drums. Those crackers that
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: you talked about that if you add water could probably
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: double up as like cement patch.
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess. But I think people would wrestle you
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: to the ground if you tried to use the water
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: for anything but drinking after, you know, in the event
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: of this. Sure.
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: I mean, that's one thing we didn't mention. If you
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: go to build your own fallout shelter, you know, you
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: should have some food. But water obviously is far more important.
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: We've talked about that a lot, about how long the
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: human body can go without food and water. Got to
• 31:31
  Speaker 2: have a lot of water. I think I would stock
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: it up with some of that Mike's Mighty Good ramen.
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: Sure. Of course.
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: Which, by the way, we'd be remiss if we didn't
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: point out that they actually sent us a coupon code
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: for Stuff You Should Know listeners.
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah.
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: This is not an ad, but we talk about that
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: ramen so much. They said, you know what? Tell everyone
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: Stuff You Should Know 20. We'll give them 20% off
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: ramen if they want to order some.
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: Very nice. Do you write the number 20 or write
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: out T-W-E-N-T-Y?
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: The number 20 after stuff you should know.
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: So 2-0.
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and you could stock up your own fallout shelter.
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: You can eat that stuff for lunch. Doesn't take up
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: a lot of room. Good calories.
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: It's multipurpose food.
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: You got to use some water for it, though.
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: Right. But I mean, hey.
• 32:19
  Speaker 2: Or you could collectively spit in it, I guess, and
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: heat that up. That's grody.
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: You're going to get that water anyway, though, you know,
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: because you're going to drink the juice.
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: That's true. So back to the public shelters, they have
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: these pretty well stocked. They said there was an actual
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: booklet in there that said, if you want a toilet,
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: cut a seat out of a chair and put a
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: bucket under it. And there's your toilet.
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: And so when that pamphlet came out in particular, the
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: American citizenry said, like, for real, this is what our
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: tax dollars are doing. This is what we're getting from
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: our government. Cut a hole in the seat of a
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: chair and put a bucket under there. That's your advice
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: for the nuclear war that you're half responsible for having
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: us live under the threat of.
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: Right. They said, we're not socialists. You take care of yourself. Yeah.
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: So the thing is, is like people would people would
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: people would read newspapers or people would like watch the
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: news or whatever. And they would be getting one channel
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: of information that was saying, like, yeah, here's what this,
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: you know, what a one megaton bomb could possibly do
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: to you. Or if this blew up over New York City,
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: this is what would happen. And people would say, well,
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: what's the point of having these fallout shelters? Because if
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: a bomb goes off over New York City, all of
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: those fallout shelters are going to be totally obliterated. There's
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: no point for them. And the government in doing something
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: like trying to at least lift some finger and make
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: people feel less anxious actually had the opposite effect because
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: it drew a lot of attention and focus to the
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: need for fallout shelters while at the same time reinforcing
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: the idea that these fallout shelters weren't going to be
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: worth anything for anybody unless maybe you lived in Topeka
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: or somewhere where there wasn't what's known as a key
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: target so that you might actually survive in a fallout
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: shelter that was well stocked and had few enough people.
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: It could work, but for most Americans, especially ones in
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: major cities, you're going to be in bad shape. And
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: the fallout shelter program really kind of pointed that out.
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: All right.
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: Should we take a break?
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: I think so. All right.
• 34:27
  Speaker 2: We'll take our last break and we'll be back right
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: after this. So before we broke, you said something about
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: unless you live in Topeka, doesn't Kansas have silos or no?
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, as I was saying it, I was like, shh. Yeah,
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: I'm glad you said something. At least they'll save us
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: the emails.
• 35:05
  Speaker 2: Okay, because that, you know, we did mention, but, you know,
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: we talked about game theory earlier about how the reasoning was, no,
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: you don't need to worry if you're in a big
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: city because there aren't military bases there.
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: But, you know, that sort of goes the way of–
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: that war goes once anything goes wrong. So if one
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: bomb from the opposition, from the enemy, goes to somewhere
• 35:29
  Speaker 2: it isn't supposed to go, then all bets are off, basically.
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: And then it's just bomb away.
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: Also, I want to give a shout-out to Robert Clara
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: from History.com, who wrote Nuclear Fallout Shelters Were Never Going
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: to Work, who wrote a pretty great article about how
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: this whole program was kind of doomed from the start.
• 35:48
  Speaker 2: It kind of says it all.
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: Ill-conceived you know but not only was it ill-conceived they
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: were also like poorly stocked some of these things that
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: were designated fallout shelters never got their supplies water drums
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: were leaking and then um others worked really well so
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: well in fact that there's one they found at the
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: oyster adams bilingual school in dc which is a school
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: still functioning today part of dc public schools but there
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: is a fallout shelter that's like a um a time capsule, basically,
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: that has all of the original provisions in it, just
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: frozen in time still.
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: Wow. It's really neat. Yeah, like that house in California.
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, basically. Except this was one of the designated public
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: fallout shelters, but below a school.
• 36:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think, didn't they try to build them to
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: house at least 50 people? Mm-hmm. And I think they had,
• 36:40
  Speaker 2: they recommended for the personal ones that they be at
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: least six and a half feet tall. Yeah. And that
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: was one of the things that sort of would have
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: been the toughest, I think, about fallout shelters. So many
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: of them had very low ceilings. Obviously, there's no windows.
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: I mean, bunker life is tough going. And they recommended
• 37:02
  Speaker 2: two weeks, which is nuts to me. There's no way
• 37:06
  Speaker 2: I'm poking my head out after two weeks just to
• 37:08
  Speaker 2: see if it's how things are going up there.
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: Right. And I mean, like there was some logic and
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: reasoning to that two weeks in that there's that you
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: would have exceeded the half-life of a lot of the
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: radionuclides that are created. But yeah, there's plenty that would
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: still be around. Yes, it was never going to work
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: like Robert Clara put it.
• 37:28
  Speaker 2: No, and I think that was sort of the idea
• 37:31
  Speaker 2: of what you were talking about with the public being
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: so disheartened and feeling helpless about our civil defense was... Like,
• 37:41
  Speaker 2: this is the general public, and they didn't think it
• 37:43
  Speaker 2: seemed like a good plan.
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: But it makes me wonder, though, is that a good thing? Like,
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: it sucks to have that kind of mental anxiety that
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: we all collectively had during the Cold War, especially at
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: the height of this stuff, like in the 60s. Yeah.
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: I think it might have actually been good because then
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: the public was aware of just how dangerous things were
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: and would prevent a kind of cavalier attitude toward nuclear
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: war because they knew what was at stake and what
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: was at stake were their very lives.
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: Maybe. I mean, and maybe that's a bottom-up sort of
• 38:15
  Speaker 2: like a groundswell of public thought ekes its way up
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: into government. And, you know, I mean, I guess we'll
• 38:23
  Speaker 2: never know how close– I mean, I don't think we've
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: ever done one on the nuclear, the Cuban Missile Crisis.
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: Have we not?
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: I don't think specifically, but, you know, we've been on
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: the brink in a way that history has recognized, but
• 38:38
  Speaker 2: I'm curious how close it's been in times that we
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: never even knew about, you know?
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: There's one guy who celebrated every year, I can't remember
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: what the day is, but it's basically like Save the
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: World Day, where this one Soviet soldier I guess a
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: missile commander basically had a few minutes, was being told
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: by his computers and all of his underlings that the U.S.
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: had launched a massive strike and that, you know, it
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: was up to him to call and order this counter
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: strike or call the people who would order the counter strike.
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: And he sweated it out. He said that he just
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: didn't believe that the Americans would have launched an unprovoked
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: all out nuclear strike like he was being shown. and
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: he stayed his hand and literally saved the world from
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: a nuclear war single-handedly. thing is, Chuck, is that has
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: happened more than once.
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm sure. Yeah. It's funny that, like, we're basically
• 39:37
  Speaker 2: the last generation that grew up with any knowledge of
• 39:41
  Speaker 2: the threat of nuclear war like this.
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: Like, we sort of experienced the tail end of the
• 39:45
  Speaker 2: Cold War.
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: Perfect generation.
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but it's hard to... The Friendly Fire podcast, which
• 39:51
  Speaker 2: is one of my favorites, the war movie podcast that
• 39:55
  Speaker 2: our buddies Ben Harrison and Adam Pranica and John Roderick do.
• 39:59
  Speaker 2: They're younger. Roderick's, you know, a few years older than me.
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: Way old.
• 40:03
  Speaker 2: So way older than you. But John kind of drives
• 40:07
  Speaker 2: this point home a lot about like it's really hard
• 40:10
  Speaker 2: to put into words what that does to a set
• 40:14
  Speaker 2: of generations when we're all sort of living under this
• 40:18
  Speaker 2: you know, very real threat that we could all die
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: the worst possible death. And, you know, not like, oh,
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: you kids have got it made or anything like that.
• 40:27
  Speaker 2: But it's a different sort of mindset, you know?
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, it definitely is. And it definitely affects
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: you from every stage of your life, you know?
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: I mean, it went away by the time we were
• 40:37
  Speaker 2: in college. But, you know, I remember my early years, obviously,
• 40:41
  Speaker 2: we were digging a fallout shelter. It was a big threat.
• 40:45
  Speaker 2: And movies and TV reinforce that every day.
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: Yep. So if you wanted to build a fallout shelter,
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: we have to say there was a time in addition
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: to designating fallout shelters. By the way, if you find
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: one of those old fallout shelter signs, hang on to it.
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: You can pretty much take it. And unless there's a
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: close watching groundskeeper Willie type who takes care of that building,
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: nobody's probably going to notice it's gone. Yeah. And the U.S.
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: government has no idea how many are out there because
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: they never kept track of the fallout shelters. There was
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: no registry or anything. Yeah.
• 41:21
  Speaker 2: I mean, they started shutting these down in the early
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: 70s officially, started giving away the food, sent some of
• 41:28
  Speaker 2: it to organizations in Africa and Bangladesh. And then those
• 41:33
  Speaker 2: signs started, I think, in the mid-70s, started pulling those
• 41:36
  Speaker 2: signs out. And I think finally, just three years ago
• 41:39
  Speaker 2: in 2017, they said that They said that they got
• 41:44
  Speaker 2: the last of the signs out of New York City.
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 41:47
  Speaker 2: And I don't think we mentioned it's hysterical that they
• 41:48
  Speaker 2: built these fallout shelters in Manhattan and Brooklyn.
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 41:52
  Speaker 2: As if that would, you know, that would lead to
• 41:54
  Speaker 2: good things.
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: Be spared.
• 41:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Or be spared.
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: Right. So if you did want to make a fallout shelter,
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: there's a pamphlet put out by Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: Where they basically hired boys. Yeah. They they had a
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: sideline in studying nuclear disaster survival. Well, like you couldn't
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: tell with their beard, you know.
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: But this pamphlet basically was the result of Oak Ridge
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: hiring a bunch of families, regular old American families. And
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: saying a nuclear war is happening right now. Go build
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: a fallout shelter. Here's your instructions. And then seeing how
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: easy it could be done and then adjusting the instructions
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: and so on and so forth until they finally got
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: to this pamphlet. And the pamphlet basically came up with
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: this really good idea. fallout shelter where you just basically
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: dug a trench in in the ground that was several
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: feet deep covered it with wood poles covered the wood
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: poles with something like cloth the old bed sheet something
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: like that put dirt on it put shower curtains something
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: waterproof and then put more dirt on that and they
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: actually figured out that this particular fallout shelter had like
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: a a A protection factor of like 300.
• 43:08
  Speaker 2: Really?
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And it would also survive a blast that most
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: houses would not survive.
• 43:13
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: Because you're just basically hunkered down in the earth. And
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: it would work for you if you wanted to. And
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: they said that it can be done. They used the
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: example that two non-athletic college-age girls did it in 36 hours.
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: That was how they were selling it.
• 43:31
  Speaker 2: We got a couple of girl couch potatoes.
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: Right. Right. Look at them.
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: Yep.
• 43:38
  Speaker 2: When I was reading about that, I figured you'd get
• 43:40
  Speaker 2: maybe a 20 out of that.
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: A 20? What do you mean?
• 43:44
  Speaker 2: For PF.
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: No, a 1 300th. Wow. Yeah. So there you go.
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: Thank you, Oak Ridge boys.
• 43:52
  Speaker 2: Giddy up. Oom-pah-pah.
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: And since Chuck said that, everybody, it's time for Listener Mail.
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: All right, I'm going to call this....
• 44:03
  Speaker 2: A series of apologies to Australia.
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: Oh, boy. Yeah, I know what this is about.
• 44:08
  Speaker 2: So before we get into the email, I do think
• 44:11
  Speaker 2: we should address this, that we've had some ads running
• 44:14
  Speaker 2: in Australia only that have been no good. And these
• 44:19
  Speaker 2: aren't ads that we knew about. These aren't ads that
• 44:21
  Speaker 2: we read. We have a separate company in Australia that's
• 44:27
  Speaker 2: doing that for us. And everything is under review right
• 44:30
  Speaker 2: now because... Um, we don't want these ads out there.
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: So yeah, it's a, it's a new relationship and we're
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: kind of figuring each other out.
• 44:37
  Speaker 2: That's right. Um, but we do want to say that, uh,
• 44:40
  Speaker 2: none of these ads were our decision. Um, if you're
• 44:43
  Speaker 2: out there and your interest is peaked and you're like,
• 44:44
  Speaker 2: oh my gosh, what are they talking about? I'll never know.
• 44:47
  Speaker 2: They were, you know, there were ads for like mining
• 44:49
  Speaker 2: companies and stuff like that, among other things.
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: Not super S Y S K type stuff.
• 44:54
  Speaker 2: No, that's right. And, and we wanted to address it
• 44:56
  Speaker 2: head on. Uh, but also we wanted to address our own, uh,
• 45:00
  Speaker 2: foibles in the billabongs terminology that we were talking about
• 45:05
  Speaker 2: in the wetlands episode.
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: Just shameful, man. It is.
• 45:08
  Speaker 2: And this is something we should know, even though we
• 45:10
  Speaker 2: are not Australians. But we use the term Aborigines very
• 45:14
  Speaker 2: sort of willy-nilly. And this is an email from Tanita.
• 45:19
  Speaker 2: She said, in the episode on wetlands, you used a
• 45:21
  Speaker 2: number of terms talking about billabongs that were not correct terminology.
• 45:26
  Speaker 2: The term Aborigines is considered outdated and and offensive as
• 45:30
  Speaker 2: it groups all indigenous groups into one term and its
• 45:33
  Speaker 2: connotations of colonial Australia. Some of the current terms and
• 45:38
  Speaker 2: correct terms for traditional owners of Australia include aboriginal people, indigenous,
• 45:45
  Speaker 2: First Nations people, and this is something that, you know,
• 45:48
  Speaker 2: we just should have known.
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: So, Yeah, plus, I mean, it applies to more than
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: just the native people of Australia, too, you know? So,
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: of course.
• 45:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and we got a bunch of emails from people
• 45:59
  Speaker 2: that said, if you really want to do right by
• 46:01
  Speaker 2: these people, you need to research the exact people that
• 46:04
  Speaker 2: you're talking about, like the Palawa people from Tasmania, where
• 46:09
  Speaker 2: she's from, or the Anaiwan people from the area around Armidale,
• 46:13
  Speaker 2: where she lives now. And we didn't do that, and
• 46:17
  Speaker 2: she said there were 250 different languages available In Australia,
• 46:20
  Speaker 2: before invasion, only 120 are now spoken. Billabong, in fact,
• 46:25
  Speaker 2: comes from the We're a Jury language from central New
• 46:29
  Speaker 2: South Wales and is now a common Australian English term.
• 46:33
  Speaker 2: And that is from Tanita and many others.
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much for taking it easy on us, Tanita.
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: That was very nice. Super Australian of you as well.
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: Just laid back and nice. And not at all like
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: chest pokey. So we appreciate that.
• 46:47
  Speaker 2: That's right. And, you know, if you're in the United
• 46:50
  Speaker 2: States and you're not quite sure what even this means,
• 46:53
  Speaker 2: it'd basically be like just saying Africa as a lump
• 46:57
  Speaker 2: all term for like any tribe in Africa and the
• 47:00
  Speaker 2: culture and the language that is very specific to that region. Right.
• 47:05
  Speaker 2: And we're not hip to that.
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: No. So thanks again. Who was that? Tanita. Yeah.
• 47:10
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: Thanks again, Tanita. Tanita. Thanks again, Australia, for taking such
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: good care of us over there. We appreciate you guys.
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: And thanks to everybody who listens to Stuff You Should Know.
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: And if you want to get in touch with us
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: for any reason, no matter where you live in the world,
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: no matter what language you speak, you can send us
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: an email to stuffpodcasts at iheartradio.com.
• 47:34
  Speaker 2: Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
• 47:36
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• 47:41
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