Take Cover, Spokane: A History of Backyard Bunkers, Basement Hideaways, and Public Fallout Shelters of the Cold War (The Ruins of Modern Civilization Series)

Take cover, Spokane, Washington. That thought propelled residents into a fallout shelter mania in the summer and fall of 1961. "It soon reached the point," Spokane humorist Kent Graybill recalled, "where if you weren't at least planning a shelter in the basement or under the petunia bed, you were practically un-American." Years earlier, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev had bellowed at the capitalist countries, "We will bury you!" In the midst of Spokane's obsession with shelter digging, Spokanite Mrs. June G. Potter observed, "Maybe Khrushchev won't have to 'bury us' after all--we seem to be doing it for him."