Model of a basement concrete block nuclear fallout shelter, designed by the US Department of Defence, made by Art Designers Incorporated, Alexandria, Virginia, USA, about 1962

This is one of a group of models (CD.19 to 25-2016) that were made in the early 1960s for use by the state of Montana in travelling exhibitions. The models were shown at fairs and other public events as part of a campaign to publicise the importance of nuclear shelters, and to encourage people to build their own. Four of the models in the V&A collection are for domestic shelters – instructions for building these are detailed in the US Department of Defense’s 1962 booklet 'Family Shelter Designs'. The other two models are for school shelters – one to be built above and one below ground.

Four of the six models (three domestic models plus the above-ground school shelter) form part of a set, for which the original travelling crate survives. Each model fits inside its own hood before being packed into the crate. There is space in the crate for one additional model which was missing when the set was acquired. It is not known what this missing model would have been. The remaining two models (for the steel culvert shelter and the below-ground school shelter) appear to have been made separately although they are in the same style as the larger group. These two do not bear labels for any model maker (the other four and the travelling crate are all labelled by Art Designers Incorporated, Virginia).

The model is one of a group designed by the US Department of Defense in 1962. Each of the models in the group shows a different type of domestic nuclear fallout shelter – from one demonstrating plywood box construction, to a shelter made inside a buried steel culvert and a concrete shelter designed to be built in a house basement. The models were shown at fairs and other public events around the US as part of a campaign to publicise the importance of nuclear shelters, and to encourage people to build their own. Instructions for building each of the shelters were detailed in the US Department of Defense’s 1962 booklet ‘Family Shelter Designs’.

The 1950s and early 1960s were a period of extremely high tension in the Cold War (the Cuban Missile crisis took place in October 1962). The US Government’s efforts at protecting civilians from nuclear attack focussed largely on plans for individual domestic shelters (rather than communal, public ones). A lack of public funding for shelter building led to concerted efforts to encourage people to build their own.

These public campaigns for do-it-yourself shelters coincided with a much wider enthusiasm for DIY in the US in the post-war years. This craze was triggered in part by a rapid rise in home ownership, by the availability of new materials, and by men and women equipped with new technical skills acquired during the war.[1] DIY quickly became a giant industry, with the cover of the 2 August 1954 Time magazine devoted to ‘Do-it-yourself. The new billion-dollar hobby’.

The trend towards DIY, and its use of ‘new’ technologically sophisticated materials such as plywood and plastics, also tied into wider narratives of the post-war American dream. In the 1950s and 1960s, DIY increasingly became a stand-in for America’s Cold War values of independence, leisure and domesticity. Within this history, the building of a nuclear fallout shelter had particular resonance. As the historian Sarah Lichtman has shown, nuclear shelters were often used to represent the family home during the 1950s and 1960s. Images and instructions for building shelters invariably cast a male builder as protector of the household, while the inside of the shelter was usually represented as a comfortable domestic space decorated by the wife and mother. In this way, programmes for shelter building fit in with the wider gender politics of the Cold War era.

This is one of a group of models of nuclear fallout shelters, used by the American state of Montana to demonstrate designs for easy-to-erect DIY shelters. The models were shown at fairs and public events in a campaign to encourage people to build their own. Instructions were detailed in the USDepartment of Defence’s 1962 booklet, ‘Family Shelter Designs’.

CD.20:1-2016