The now-defunct Office of Civil Defense - a precursor to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA - once estimated that 230,000 sites in New York City were designated fallout shelters. That it was a fraud that there is no such thing as survivability.” Jeffrey Kroessler, an associate professor who specializes in New York City history and is the interim chief librarian at John Jay College. “I'm really struck at the enormous fraud that was perpetrated on the public,” says Dr. In truth, it didn't matter if the shelters worked or not if a nuclear bomb went off, most people would be dead from the initial blast.įallout shelter signs are the last remnants of an ill-conceived program that was designed to quell the fears and anxieties of Americans who had little faith in the shelters to begin with. Thousands of these black-and-yellow signs still remain on structures throughout the city’s five boroughs, marking locations where New Yorkers could take refuge from the deadly radioactivity of a nuke - more than 50 years ago.īack then, these shelters were mostly concrete windowless rooms packed with canned goods and water supplies to sustain people for days - but they were never all they were cracked up to be in terms of protection. But if an atomic bomb does explode in the city, experts advise against taking cover in a building with a fallout shelter sign. This summer, New York City officials released a public service announcement about what people should do in case of nuclear Armageddon.
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