Gimme Shelter

A spiritu fomicationis,
Domine, hibera nos.
From the lightning and the tempest,
O Lord, deliver us.
From the scourge of the earthquake,
O Lord, deliver us.
From plague, famine, and war,
O Lord, deliver us.

From the place of ground zero,
O Lord, deliver us.
From the rain of the cobalt,
O Lord, deliver us.
From the rain of the strontium,
O Lord, deliver us.
From the fall of the cesium,
O Lord, deliver us.

From the curse of the Fallout,
O Lord, deliver us.
From the begetting of monsters,
O Lord, deliver us.
From the curse of the Misborn,
O Lord, deliver us.
A morte perpetua,
Domine, libera nos.

Peccatores, te rogamus, audi nos.
That thou wouldst spare us,
we beseech thee, hear us.
That thou wouldst pardon us,
we beseech thee, hear us.
That thou wouldst bring us truly to penance,
Te rogamus, audi nos.

From A Canticle for Leibowitz, by Walter Miller, Jr.

This story begins several years ago. Someone sent me a link to a street sign bearing the name “Fallout Shelter Road.” Knowing my penchant for local exploration, the sender asked me if I knew if there was actually a shelter on that road.

At the time I did a bit of digging, but put it aside for something else that caught my attention. Recently, someone asked the same question on Reddit. I pulled up the research I had done previously and started digging even further. This time I wouldn’t be distracted.

I am a child of the Cold War. I was too young to worry about such things as Duck and Cover, but I lived through the Cuban Missile Crisis and subsequent terrors.

What I do remember seeing were the Civil Defense icons and the iconic Fallout Shelter signs on key buildings.

Not sure when I realized it, but over time I was seeing fewer of these signs. I remember a few examples – the basement of Gray Court-Owings School, the basement of McAlister Auditorium at Furman, and several churches. The Cold War was cooling even further in an age of Glasnost and Perestroika.

But, back to the question at hand…

I went back to my original research, where I found a Greenville News article from 1970. This had a map that shows that there was, in fact, a fallout shelter on the eponymous road. This was at an old Greenville Water Works facility. The map also showed the locations of shelters all around the county.

There was a more detailed map of downtown, as well as maps for the county’s other cities. You can click on the images for a larger version.

It turns out that these maps were part of an eight page special on civil defense. The maps have numbers which correspond with different fallout shelters. Another page in the article listed these shelters, along with their addresses.

I had answered the original question, but now I was curious. How many of these shelters still exist? Are there any of the old Fallout Shelter signs still around?

EDIT: A comment from a Redditor about this info asked whether or not these were just random rooms in a building or if they were actually reinforced bunkers. I believe they were just rooms in a basement or other area closed to the outside. To qualify as a shelter they need to have a certain amount of supplies, such as water and food. These were designed to protect from fallout, not from an actual nuclear blast.

The first thing I did was to take the locations above and type them into a spreadsheet. This wasn’t as easy as it might seem. The paper had incomplete addresses for many of the shelters. I guess the paper assumed that readers would know where “Woodruff Road and I-85” are, so an exact address wasn’t necessary. Sadly, Google Maps/Earth and GIS systems only recognize actual addresses.

Of course, there are also all of the changes that take place since 1970. Buildings are replaced. Roads change. Sometimes the name changes, but the building remains the same. It gets very confusing. I tried to indicate where the buildings in the article are no longer extant or if the name has changed.

The next step was to view the data on a map, one where I could zoom into current information rather than an outdated 1970s map in print.

The Greenville News article had locations for 387 shelters. Of these, 287 were public shelters and 89 were listed as “occupants only.” I dismissed those and concentrated on the public shelters. As mentioned previously, a few didn’t have addresses, but I knew where some of these were. I opened Google Maps, found those buildings, then added the correct address, if it was available, or the latitude and longitude if it was not.

Once I added as many addresses as I could, I did an initial extract of the data and imported it into Google Maps. Using the satellite view and Street View I finished my list of extant buildings. That gave me my final list of 181 possible fallout shelter locations that are in extant buildings around the county.

Of course, I still had no way of verifying whether or not any of these shelters still exist. The building may be the same, but remodeling and other changes could have removed the shelters. The only way to really verify was to visit each of them, which would take more time than I had.

Even so, I wanted to see what was still around. I had a couple of places I wanted to check out where I remembered seeing a fallout shelter sign. My goal wasn’t to see if the shelter still exists, but just to see if the building still had a sign.

I drove to the spots I remembered having the signs, but struck out each time. I also drove past some of the potential targets I had on my map. No joy. I was beginning to think that all of the signs had been removed. That doesn’t surprise me. Lots of the places had been repainted and remodeled, and, of course, the signs were taken down and never put back up.

I did have one more place to try. At Furman there is a little known lounge under the entryway to McAlister Auditorium. 40 years ago our band practiced there, and I remember that it was once a shelter. I couldn’t get over there myself, but my friend Emily Sweezey works in the music department and was able to take a look. There weren’t signs in the place I remember, but there was one on the stairs leading down below the stage. Emily sent me a photo.

Civil Defense is no more. It’s been replaced by FEMA in order to address a broader range of catastrophes, such as storms, wildfires, etc. During Hurricane Helene I was happy to have FEMA available to pick up the remains of the massive tree that hit our house. But this means that the old Civil Defense materials have become collectors items. I’m sure that any of the signs that weren’t removed and discarded have found their way onto the antique market. Some years ago I came across this Civil Defense Geiger counter at the Pickens Flea Market.

The world is still a scary place with new threats, but I’m glad “Duck and Cover” no longer dominates our waking hours. Should such a war break out, I lean more towards Tom Lehrer’s philosophy, so I’ll leave you with this…