January 19, 2007

"The reward... may be.. SURVIVAL!"

I'm not ashamed to admit that one of my most prized possessions is a circa 1962 U.S. Civil Defense fallout shelter water storage barrel, which I inherited from the Boston University Physical Plant (where it was sitting around unused in the paint shop) during my time working as a carpenter's lackey there; there were apparently tons of them left in the old National Guard Armory Building on campus prior to its demolition and subsequent replacement by the shiny new Student Village housing complex, and while most of them were junked I managed to pick up this one. It makes a great end table with a piece of plywood on top, but is unfortunately not too suitable to shipping overseas to my current home of Japan.

In lieu of that, I will have to feed my fascination with Cold War ephemera via this wonderful collection classic U.S. Civil Defense filmstrips (and also general Cold War-era reels), found at the Internet Archive thanks to a tip at Lawyers, Guns, and Money (the "House in the Middle" spot highlighted in that post truly has to be seen to be believed). Watching this stuff, I think it's not too hard to see why we got the 60's.

No comments: