On September 29, 1961, an episode of the Twilight Zone ran – The Shelter. I always called it the Twilight Zone bunker episode. It was the story of a family retreating to their basement fallout shelter on news of a nuclear strike.
The Twilight Zone. I loved that show. Each episode was unique, and always opened with that Twilight Zone theme song. You can hear it now, can’t you? The Shelter is my favorite episode.
A suburban dinner party is interrupted by a bulletin warning of an impending nuclear attack. As the neighbors scramble to prepare themselves, they turn against the one family that installed a permanent bomb shelter.
IMD The Twilight Zone The Shelter
The Shelter is a popular episode among preppers, because 1) it underscores the need for operational security, and 2) it leaves the viewer wondering, what would I do? This latter quandary is like the various scenarios in the popular prepper game Conflicted: The Survival Card Game (additional survival board games).
This particular episode was directed by Lamont Johnson and starred Larry Gates as Dr. Bill Stockton, Joseph Bernard as Mary Weiss, Jack Albertson as Jerry Harlowe, and Peggy Stewart as Grace Stockton.
It’s a 25 minute episode that aired in 3 parts. It’s worth watching, but because it’s The Twilight Zone, and because it’s survivalism – 1960s style.
Want to make your own low-cost home fallout shelter? See our free PDF designs.
Twilight Zone The Shelter
Watch The Shelter below and let me know your thoughts in the comments section.
10 comments
Heh; This one is easy! 1st, take all of the WOMEN! (except the ugly ones) 2nd, take only the men that have skills and are healthy. 3rd, Limit the whole thing to how much food, water and space you have.
This video gave me a weird idea. Did you see how all those people immediately calmed down when the president or whoever came over the air and said the event was over?
With a voice modulator and adobe’s sound program I could make several tracks with prerecorded official sounding messages that I could play if necessary.
Wouldn’t work in a lot of situations, and it would require a lot of different messages to cover all the possible scenarios.
Like I said. Weird idea.
Today’s TV is nothing like it was back in the days before greed took it over.
i didn’t watch the video, although i may have seen a rerun of the show when i was little. most often, television has disparaged people who would build a shelter. they have tried to shame the american people into not preparing. they routinely portray gun ownership in a bad light. why wouldn’t you hate television?
I was really expecting the good doctor to open fire when they pushed through. I wonder if I would have.
I missed this episode when I was a kid. Twilight Zone was on during the time when I was required to be in my room doing my homework. This was a time when you did what you were told. I so wanted to see this series when it was running. I caught a couple of them during this period, but not this one.
To me, this episode dealt less with OPSEC than it did with how people might react to a SHTF scenario like the one in One Second After – shelter or not. Today, the doctor would probably have had a gun and so would the people trying to get into his shelter. We might have had a better chance of surviving if the SHTF in 1959 than in 2011.
if you have a fallout shelter or have been stockpiling food,ammo ect….and planning for a SHTF scenario……KEEP YOU DAMN MOUTH SHUT!!!!!!
That’s right, don’t be a blabber-mouth or a braggert! Keep quiet and say things like “I just don’t know what I would do.”
One thing I saw was the bunker door was way too easy to break down. sorry but if I was to build something that is supposed to survive a bombing, I sure would doubt that anything less would not be able to penetrate. Much less when building a fallout shelter properly there would be no way to get a battering ram anywhere near the door. Also the only people who would know about it would be my family, and only because I would enlist their help in building it. Of course it would then be large enough to accommodate… IF they brought enough food, water, and ammo for themselves.
I know- necro-posting. Sue me. 🙂
I’ve been reading back through the articles for awhile, and this one got me to thinking… what if your shelter was, say, a sailboat? When the SHTF, cast off ASAP (if you can) and get the hell out of the one place where everyone knows about your stockpiling ways. Anything short of an asteroid or nuclear/radiological blast would see you safely out and away before everyone else starts getting hungry.
It’d be kinda limited in space, but not by too much. Also, it’d be harder for the neighbors (and everyone else) to be banging on your door if you’re anchored a few miles offshore. If the boat is big enough, you can take it literally anywhere that’s the safest.