The Aiken Municipal Fallout Shelter was an underground shelter built in Aiken in the 1960s as part of Cold War civil defense preparations against a possible nuclear attack on the United States. In the atomic age, atom and hydrogen bombs threatened destruction through both massive explosions and radioactive fallout that could spread through the air and contaminate large areas, so fallout shelters were seen as a necessary way to protect people by limiting exposure to radioactive particles after an attack. Such shelters could be underground or built into existing buildings, and they were designed for continuous habitation for fourteen days or longer, with thick concrete walls, hand-cranked ventilation systems, and stocked supplies including food and entertainment. After the United States and the USSR became rivals following World War Two, especially after the USSR tested an atom bomb in 1949, federal agencies promoted civil preparedness, designated suitable shelters, and educated the public, while later national policy under Eisenhower and Kennedy also encouraged families to build and stock home shelters. In Aiken, construction of the municipal shelter was completed in September 1960 with federal funding and city support, and the small concrete structure buried under earth at Park Avenue and Laurens Street was designed to hold six to eight people for two weeks or longer. It was stocked with food, regularly maintained, and supported by local merchants, while fears were heightened by the nearby Savannah River Plant, which many believed could be a Soviet target. By the late 1960s, public fatigue, skepticism about shelters, and improving superpower relations reduced fears, and as the push for fallout shelters subsided in the 1970s, the Aiken shelter was sealed in 1970 after a series of break-ins.

Photo: Tom Bosse

Photo: Tom Bosse

Photo: Tom Bosse

Aiken, South Carolina · USA