The National Fallout Shelter Survey, which began in September of 1961, brought the Army Corps of Engineers and civilian architects and engineers who were put through Civil Defense training classes around the country to survey existing buildings to see if they would be feasible as public Fallout Shelters.
To be selected as a shelter, the building had to meet three criteria:
-Protection Factor of 40 (meaning a person would receive 1/40th the radiation inside the shelter than he or she would outside without protection. Noted below and in official documents as “PF.”)
-Room for at least 50 persons
-10 square feet of space per person
Once the survey was underway, buildings that were identified (and licensed if they were private) were marked with the official Fallout Shelter sign, and in some cases stocked with civil defense rations and equipment. As we have featured on our site in the past, the first shelter marked in Massachusetts was The Massachusetts State House in a ceremony that took place on November 5, 1962.
However, this document above (and linked below) from a 1963 shelter study done by the Stanford Research Institute for Boston shows that the original plan by civil defense officials was to only mark shelters with a PF of 100 or more, and mark any shelter with less than a PF of 100 with a differing sign, possibly with something saying “unmarked refuge,”
In the 155-page study, the difference between PF 100 and PF 40 shelters is discussed, as well as the percent of which type of shelter would be occupied day and night and the fact that the shelters that were stocked were at least PF 100. There are also maps showing where potential shelters in Boston were, although it is not differentiated by specific location, just dots marking potential shelter sites within various Boston neighborhoods.
It is interesting to know that we may have seen a sign other than the one we are used to (and this site is dedicated to), though I’m glad they decided to stick with the one.
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Document retrieved on January 28, 2024, from archive.org
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