I just caught the tail end of a report on CNN about the explosion in the bunker industry, the manufacturers of underground or fallout shelters, as they first appeared during the Cold War. For those of you old enough to remember, there was once a real boom in fallout shelter construction, inspired by the possibility of a Soviet nuclear attack.

I guess today, the times are apocalyptic enough, even without a hostile Soviet Union rattling its sabers. There's a lot of end time and end of days nonsense going around, not to mention Japanese nuclear disasters, threatened meteorite strikes, and Mayan Solstice scenarios. And you have to admit, there is a small but non-zero probability the world just might come to an end at any time, for a variety of unlikely, but not impossible, reasons. The market for backyard bunkers has gone through the roof and a lot of folks are ordering theirs, and enterprising contractors are rushing to meet the demand. Hey, don't knock 'em, if I could afford one, I'd get one myself. It never hurts to be ready, and you can always use it for a guest house and storage so it won't go to waste even if the world doesn't come to an end. It would make a perfect man-cave, too.

It was a nostalgia trip for me. When I was researching my Geography thesis on residential swimming pool distribution in Tampa (It was a remote sensing/air photo analysis application, and I had access to the negatives of a detailed air photo mapping survey of the city.) I skimmed through several decades of "Swimming Pool Age", a trade magazine for the pool industry. In the early 60s, when the first bloom of backyard in-ground pool construction was approaching saturation, the industry was gearing up for new markets, and they were well prepared for digging holes in the ground and building things in them. There were a lot of success stories about companies that were using their experience and equipment installing the shelters, and almost every issue had helpful hints and advice for contractors thinking of getting into the bunker biz.

There was a time when the government was really keen on getting the American public hooked on shelters. The idea was that it would give the Soviets second thoughts about launching an attack, because enough Americans might survive that the country would survive. It was all nonsense, of course, but at the time it seemed perfectly reasonable, and it was comforting. At least the government was trying to do something about it. It was only yesterday.