Thursday, March 18, 2010

Weird NJ: Nike Missile Bases



I know this is long, but it brought back some memories for me.
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9 comments:

Toad said...

Neat Orb's. I remember the site in South Milwaukee on the Lakefront. Oh what a time we have lived in EH?

March 19, 2010 at 9:15 AM
Sassa said...

Yes I lived through all that. We (Children) would play war games in our heads..What if this..what if that...Is that tree good enough to hide under..no the basement is the best place. My dad did everything to quell our fears and stated 'that would never happen'. Of course he knew so I was not afraid. But we talked about it a lot.

March 19, 2010 at 9:33 AM
OrbsCorbs said...

Back then we figured Milwaukee and Chicago were targeted for sure, and probably us because of all the manufacturing.

I've always wanted to see a homemade bomb shelter. I wonder how many people actually dug and built those?

March 19, 2010 at 10:18 AM
Toad said...

Orb's. When things got really ripe with the Cuban Missile Crisis my dad bought a bunch of dry and canned food and put it on shelves in our OLD coal bin on Grange Ave. He also covered all of the basement windows with aluminum sheets to protect us from the Ray's (I guess?) A year or so later we managed to get rid of the food items (one way or another) and turned the coal bin into a kind of Fort. Coal bins were really neat.

March 19, 2010 at 3:55 PM
Toad said...

Orb's. BTW, the First house next to the Zoo on the East side of the street had an "Official" fallout shelter build in their basement. I remember as a kid seeing it. I would imagine it is still there?

March 19, 2010 at 3:58 PM
OrbsCorbs said...

It was absolutely rational behavior at the time. I remember the fear well, especially the Cuban Missile Crisis. My parents were DPs from World War II and it was all very real to me.

Thanks for the info on the local fallout shelter, Toad. Now I just have to figure out a way to convince the current owners to let me see it. Maybe I'll tell them I'm a JTI "reporter" and we want to do a feature story on their basement shelter.

March 19, 2010 at 6:45 PM
SER said...

Oak Creek Power Plant had 3 of them, I watched them come up out of the ground one day. That was back in 1964 when the Army and a shooting range out there.

March 19, 2010 at 10:33 PM
kkdither said...

Orbs, what cha' got to offer as a bribe? My house was built in the 50's. Get this: there is a fortified cement brick and overhead I-beam bomb shelter down in the basement. It reminds me of a tomb. My plan is to store wine down there, but it never lasts long enough :)

I've read that radiation will 'flow' downward, so not too safe a place to hide from the big one. Should be fine in a tornado though, esp if there was some wine down there....

I remember drills at school where we had to crawl under our desks.

March 20, 2010 at 1:21 PM
OrbsCorbs said...

Wow, kk. Now I know where to go when they push the button. Actually, my plan is to jump into my building's dumpster when they drop the big one.

March 21, 2010 at 7:34 PM

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