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Phil Winkler wrote:This is a good question for Torode or Varnedoe. I remember opening bags of hard lemon flavored candy and cans of water, too. Shelta Cave was a designated fallout shelter. I don't know if the sign is still there, tho.
JD wrote:I wrote a lengthy article on this topic for the Journal of Spelean History. About 450 caves and mines were designated as fallout shelters. The boxes included food, radiation exposure kits, medical supplies, etc. The idea was to spend c. 10 days underground when the American and Ssoviets went to full scale atomic war, c. 1961-2. This was JFK's baby, though the idea goes back to WW II at least. The entire population of Van Buren County Tennessee was to take shelter in Big Bone Cave, for example.
"Shelter from the Atomic Storm: The National Speleological Society and the Use of Caves as Fallout Shelters, 1940-
1965"; Douglas, Joseph; v30 #4 (#104) 1996 14 pgs
Btw, there was a big fight in the NSS over whether to resist this bit of governmental stupidity or to work with them and thus help refine the program. There are echoes of this debate in today's WNS debate. The paper isn't very clear, but I argue this debate helped propel the NSS into becoming a conservation group, as opposed to a mostllty scientist and recreational caver organization, which it clearly was in the beginning. The tension between the three is still there today in the NSS
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