“You go in those buildings now and you’ll see they’re not proper locations for bomb shelters,” Aguiar said. “Even going back to the 1970s, I don’t remember those shelters being in place,” Aguiar said.Īmong the reasons for decommissioning the facilities, beyond the reduced concern of threat, Aguiar said, was the potential costs associated with keeping them properly stocked with survival supplies - and the fact that, in reality, the shelters wouldn’t have provided that much protection. Any former lists documenting the locations of such shelters also seem to have gone the way of “duck and cover” filmstrips that were shown in schools during the Cold War era. Richard Aguiar, the city’s Emergency Management Director, said his office doesn’t keep an active list of the former shelter sites, as response strategies have shifted. Then there’s the building that now houses Highland Restaurant Supply on Robeson Street, where the faded sign hangs on the side of the building only to be seen by those looking for it. Some, such as the former Citizens-Union Savings Bank building next to Government Center, have hundreds of people walking by regularly, likely oblivious to the signs. If they are right, though, where would one turn for shelter? A piece of advice: don’t flock to buildings in the region with “fallout shelter” signs hanging outside.ĭespite the Cold War-era threat of nuclear war being little more than a topic in history books and of interest to history buffs, the faded black and yellow signs still hang from local buildings decades later. The recent warm weather may have people thinking of a sun-splashed summer, but some may also see the unusually high temperatures as a harbinger of something worse - the end of the world.Ĭombine extreme weather events with doomsday theorists who point to 2012 as the end of the Mayan calendar and the talk of Iran developing its nuclear capacity, and maybe - though hopefully unlikely - the believers are on to something.
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