Bomb Shelters are Booming

A couple years ago, I went on an architectural tour of a mid-century home that had a nuclear fallout shelter in the backyard. I kept imagining how tense and uncertain the Cold War atmosphere must have been for people to resort to such measures.

Check out this article in TIME magazine from 1961, where a developer was offering a built-in concrete and steel structure under the garage as an "option" for the new home buyer. Good thing we don't have to consider that now, I thought.

As it turns out, the fallout shelter business is once again on the rise, and this time not just in response to man-made disasters. A recent Los Angeles Times article discusses how a new generation of shelters purports to save us from natural catastrophes like earthquakes and tsunamis as well.